The Religion of the Plain Man

The Religion of the Plain Man

by Father Robert Hugh Benson

Tke Religion of the Plain Man

by Father Robert Hugh Benson

Preface

I am perfectly aware that this book is open to an almost
innumerable multitude of criticisms. It will be said, for
example, that it is unscholarly and unlearned; because to
deal with the subject of the Catholic Church and to omit all
patristic literature and its consideration, and, instead, to
take refuge in the Penny Catechism, is the sign of one who is
afraid to face problems. It will be said that it is rhetorical and
inexact, emotional and unintellectual, contemptuous and
uncharitable. I shall be told to hold my tongue if I have
nothing better to do than to appeal to man's weakness
instead of his strength, to his imagination rather than his
reason. In fact, so far as the book may be noticed at all by
those who do not see with me in religious matters, I foresee
quite a quantity of unpleasant remarks.

A book itself is its only defence; and yet it seems to me
worth while, in this preface, to emphasize what I shall hope
to emphasize again and again in the following pages, and to
say that in substance some of those criticisms will be
perfectly true.

The book is intended for the "man in the street" who, after
all, has a certain claim on our consideration, since Jesus
Christ came to save his soul. This man in the street, like
myself, is entirely unable to discourse profoundly upon the
Fathers, or to decide where scholars disagree in matters of
simple scholarship. His religion is composed partly of
emotion, a good deal of Scripture, partly of imagination and,
to a very small extent, of reason. He is competent to say
what he thinks a text probably means; and to recognize a
few of the plainer facts of history, such as that Rome has
always had some sort of a Pope, and that ambition and

wickedness may perhaps have characterized certain persons
high in ecclesiastical affairs. He is capable also of
understanding that oaks grow from acorns, and athletes
from babies; and of perceiving a law or two in the
development of life; he can grasp that poison has a
tendency to kill; and that two mutually exclusive
propositions require a good deal of proof before they can be
accepted as different aspects of one truth.

Now this kind of intellectual attainment seems a poor
equipment for the pursuit of salvation; but it is undoubtedly
the only equipment that many of us have, and it is God that
has made us and not we ourselves. Therefore if we believe in
God at all at least in a God of mercy or even justice we are
bound to acknowledge that this equipment is all that we
actually require. To tell me that because I cannot infallibly
pronounce upon an obscure sentence of Saint Cyprian's, I
am thereby debarred from making up my mind about the
necessary truths of the Christian religion, is to represent my
Maker as unjust and capricious. I am only capable of that of
which I am capable.

I have attempted therefore in these lectures, delivered, in
more or less their present form, in the Church of our Lady
and the English Martyrs at Cambridge, to deal with the
question of the Christian religion from the standpoint which I
have tried to indicate. I have quoted the Penny Catechism
rather than Saint Thomas Aquinas, because the one is more
accessible than the other to persons of moderate
attainments. In this sense, though I sincerely hope in no
others, it is an unscholarly and inexact book.

As regards its rhetorical emotionalism I can only say that a
truth is not less of a truth if it is dressed in what may seem
to some even a tawdry costume, and may perhaps be more
attractive to certain eyes.

As regards the possibility of "contemptuous
uncharitableness , 11 I am extremely sorry if I have given any
cause for this accusation I can only say that I have done my
best to avoid it. But I have not attempted to avoid a poor
sort of humour now and then; for I do not see why I need do
so. There are both funny people and funny things in this
world; and we are more and not less Catholic if we
acknowledge their existence. But I think that I do not
anywhere attribute bad faith or in sincerity of any kind to
my opponents; and that, after all, is the only unpardonable
de vice in controversy. Nor have I anywhere mocked at any
doctrine which has any right to be held as sacred by
anybody. I have endeavoured to show that some intellectual
theories are absurdly impossible; but never that spiritual
experience is any thing but holy and reverend.

Again, I have certainly appealed to man's weakness rather
than his strength, for we have the best authority for
believing that in this God's might is made manifest. As we
may argue for the Incarnation on the ground of man's crying
need of it, so we may deduce that man's ignorance
necessitates a heavenly teacher.

Finally I desire all competent persons to point out to me, if
they will kindly take the trouble, the many errors into which
I may have fallen; and I submit all those errors unreservedly
with the deepest filial piety to the correction and admonition
of my Mother the Church.

Perhaps it is unnecessary to remark that I have for the most
part followed in my quotations the "Authorized Version" of
the Scriptures, for reasons that will be evident from the
nature of the book.

- Father Robert Flugh Benson, The Catholic Rectory,
Cambridge, England, May, 1906

Chapter 1 - General View of English
Religion

It would appear a ludicrous undertaking to attempt to deal
with the Catholic Church in six lectures, when we consider
the volumes that have been written, the theological learning
poured out, the libraries that yet remain to be composed on
this enormous fact. But my object, is to deal, not with the
Catholic Church as a whole, but rather with some of its
aspects as presented to the "plain man." Even so, no more
than a bird's-eye view is possible. I say to the "plain man";
because it was to him, after all, that Christ came and spoke,
for him that He suffered and rose again, for him that He
instituted the means of grace, and to him that the Gospel of
salvation is sent. The plain man, therefore, and not the
professed theologian, must, in a sense, be the final arbiter; it
is the primary function of the theologian not to theorize and
soar, but to interpret, explain and disclose to ordinary men
the mysteries of God's revelation.

From the Gospels as well as from history we learn the perils
of too much knowledge. It was the "man in the street" who
understood our Lord, the doctor of the law who was
perplexed and offended; it was the over-confident, over¬
weighted, over-acute scholar of the middle ages that was
condemned by Christ's Vicar; and it was the simple and
faithful, even if unlearned, Catholic who has always been
approved by the same authority. It is necessary, therefore, to
remember that no doctrine can be of explicit faith, no theory
be a pivot of salvation, no scheme a condition of
redemption, which cannot be I do not say understood but at
least apprehended by the simple folk whom Christ died to
save. The Faith may be huge and complex; but faith is a
single act.

I propose, therefore, in these lectures to deal with my
subject from this point of view, and no other; and for this
purpose to construct a dummy-figure with the brain of an
average man, to endow him with sincerity, fearlessness and
a hunger for God, to trace the workings of his mind when
confronted with difficulties, to follow the fortunes of his
spiritual quest, and to attempt to under stand and interpret
the reasons that affect his will. And in order to make our
attempt practical rather than theoretical, we will place him
in England, under average conditions; we will give him no
extraordinary opportunities; we will allow him no great
capacities beyond that for God which all men possess; we
will suppose him to have accepted Christianity in general as
the highest representative of the mind of God, and its
Founder as divine; and to desire to know which of its many
presentations is the true one. Lastly, for the sake of brevity,
we will give him a name, that stands on the one side for one
who was dear to our Lord beyond all others, and on the other
from its very simplicity as representing an ag gregate of
those qualities I have tried to describe. His name is John.

As he looks out onto the religious world of England today, he
is at first confounded by the numerous claimants on his
belief. As one who has accepted Christianity in the main, he
sets aside immediately all those ethical and religious bodies
of persons who repudiate that name, and even some of
those who claim it. He has nothing to ask of Christian
Science, of Mormons, or the Abode of Love; for we must
remember that he is but a plain man, uncoloured by
fanaticism. Yet still the call that "this is the way, let him walk
in it" is sufficiently plural to bewilder him. As he goes down
the streets of his native town, awake for the first time to the
huge issues of life and eternity, he sees, it may be, half a
dozen places of worship, each bearing a different name, and
each, presumably, claiming to be the purest well of salvation
known to man. He is almost daunted at the beginning of his

quest. How is it possible for him, a man who has neither
leisure nor learning, and who is sufficiently modest as to his
natural infallibility, to distinguish in the chorus the voice
that calls him to God?

Yet, when he makes his inquiries, talks personally to various
divines, and lays before them his troubles, he is greatly
reassured by their conversation.

"You must not think," they tell him, "that every
denomination proclaims a peculiar faith. It is on minor points
only that we differ one from the other. This man prefers one
discipline, that another; the hymns of Wesley are pleasant to
those who bear his name, antipathetic to others who do not.
In the main we are at one; the great truths of Christianity are
the same to us all; our witness is on one note though the
tone may vary, for we all base our religion upon the written
word of God; it is here in a book bound between boards; it is
accessible to all alike, as is also the free and princely Spirit
of God who assists each sincere searcher after the Divine
and brings him to the truth that makes him free. And, if you
wish for proofs of this charity and brotherliness, you can find
them in the facts of the time. We have learnt at last that
what unites us is greater than what divides us; we are
agreed, for example, that Bible religion should be taught in
the schools without the peculiar tenets of our various
denominations; our ministers and our people meet on the
same platform for missionary, social, ethical and devotional
work, and for every great spiritual enterprise. Read your
Bible, my dear sir, with prayer to God, mix with your fellow-
men, attend the place of worship of any denomination that
finds a place in the Federation of the Free Churches, and you
will find that our words are true."

It is an immense relief to John to hear these words, for he
need no longer fear that he is called by God to decide

between claims on which he is deeply ignorant; he thanks
his friends, and he goes home with his Bible.

Three months elapse.

At the close of his three months he is not so completely at
peace as he was at the beginning; for he has found the
Bible, approached as a dogmatic work, unsuited to nis own
capacities. From his friends words he had half expected to
find it to be a code of rules, an ordered creed, a collection of
precise maxims and statements. But in fact it is something
very different.

There are intricate histories of persons who appear to be of
no great or practical importance, of tribes and peoples
whose names he cannot even pronounce. There are
innumerable stories, some inexpressibly touching, some
apparently fantastic, some which have an appearance of
half-truth half-fable which he hopes he is not expected to
believe. There is a quantity of poetry which he cannot
understand, although he draws from its reading a
mysterious pleasure that he cannot explain; an abundance
of logic of which he cannot apprehend either the premisses
or the conclusions; a collection of splendid visions that
bewilder him; but above all the history of a life set like a
jewel in the midst, so glorious, so pathetic, so triumphant
that his hunger for God increases ten-fold.

But of precise statements of doctrine there are very few. It
seems then that he must have an interpreter. "How can I
understand," he asks, "except some man should guide me?"

He is a careful and earnest man, and he has made notes in
the course of his study; and from these he selects three or
four texts that more particularly bewilder him. They appear
to him either so plain that he is amazed that his friends do

not give greater evidence of their observance, or so deep
that they are beyond his understanding altogether; and with
these in his hand and his mind alive to impressions, he
consults his friends in order.

His first interpreter is the Baptist minister; and to him he
puts his four selected questions.

"My dear friend," is the answer, "in this first text, Except a
man be born of water and of the spirit, etc.,* you have put
your finger on a most important matter. That is one of our
special tenets. Except a man, says the Gospel, not a child,
we are most strict on the matter of what we call believers
baptism. Besides, even if you think that we press the text
too hard, how can an unconscious child be affected by such
a ceremony?

"With regard to your second point, 'This is My Body , 1 I
answer that this is a beautiful and touching ceremony
instituted by our Lord, to teach us the union of believers in
Him. We practise this regularly in our church.

"Your third point is another matter altogether. It is doubtful
what our Lord meant when He apparently gave a
commission to forgive sins. Probably it was no more than a
command to preach the saving Gospel through which sins
are forgiven. If it was more, it has certainly died with the
apostles. You must not take this too literally.

"As respects your fourth point, 'The Word was made Flesh,'
this is one of the texts that demonstrate our Lord's divinity."

The next friend that John approaches is the Salvation Army
captain; but he is astonished by the answer he receives. He
is told that the last point is indeed most important; that if
Jesus be not God there can be no remission of sins through
His Precious Blood; but that the first three points are wholly

unimportant. Sacraments, he is informed, are purely
external, arbitrary symbols, that can be varied or abolished
as customs change. For baptism the Army has practically
substituted the waving of a flag.

The Presbyterian tells him that the first two points and the
last are vital; but adds that a properly ordained minister is
necessary to the validity of sacraments, contradicting the
hint given by the Baptist that every layman is a priest.

The Congregationalist stoutly maintains that ministers are
no more than preachers, and that every form of
sacerdotalism is contrary to the true Gospel.

The Wesleyan agrees with the Baptist, except on the point of
believers baptism. Children too, he says, are capable of
being incorporated into the church.

Finally the Unitarian, who claims to be a Christian in the
highest sense, tells John that he is altogether at fault, that
he has missed the whole point of the Bible, which is ethical
not dogmatic, and still less ceremonial; and he adds the last
stone to John's dismay by dismissing his last text altogether
as being either the addition of a later hand, or, if not, merely
a poetical statement of the supreme humanity of Jesus
Christ.

At the end of his week's inquiry John returns home
convinced completely of one single fact, namely that the
Bible is insufficient as a guide to true religion.

A month later he puts his difficulties to a sympathetic friend.

"I am altogether puzzled," he says. "When I took up my
Bible, I soon discovered that I needed some sort of
interpreter who would inform me as to what parts of it
concerned vital religion. For example, it cannot be necessary

to salvation or even to piety to know the history of Maher-
shalal-hash-baz. I set down, therefore, a few explicit
statements from the New Testament statements pronounced
in three cases by our Lord Himself, and the fourth
concerning His essential nature by His most intimate friend;
and I took them for their interpretation to those who had
told me that the true religion was built upon the Bible, and
that all Protestants were agreed on all vital points. Yet of the
six groups whom I so consulted no two agreed on all the
points; one dismissed them all, others added information
which others again denied.

"Nor can it be said that these points are not vital. If our
Blessed Lord thought it worth while to speak so explicitly of
ceremonies, it is scarcely decent of His followers to despise
them. These points, too, cannot be theoretical; they are the
most practical of all; they concern the beginning of the
Christian life, its sustenance and its cleansing. They affect,
not abstractions, but actions. Each of my friends may be
right in his interpretation, but they cannot all be."

"My dear fellow," answers his friend, "you are perfectly right
to be dismayed. You have found the need of an authorized
interpreter of the Scriptures. It is, as you say, impossible to
be an undenominationalist and to retain the Christian faith.
The process of this new heresy is that of corrosion; little by
little it wears away what has been called the impregnable
Rock. If one believes in baptism, another does not; therefore,
by all that is sacred in that holy word, let us be liberal, cries
the undenominationalist, and abolish baptism! It is narrow¬
minded and bigoted, he says, if not positively uncharitable
to hold for vital what my equally learned and holy brother
does not!

"Do you not see, John, that undenominationalism is a state,
not a place; it is transitory, not permanent? What is required

then, and what God in His mercy has provided, is a steady
authorized witness and interpreter of the truth of His
Scriptures. We must have definite unchanging creeds for the
laity, searching articles of religion for the clergy, a liturgy
that enshrines the Faith in devotional form. In all else there
is change and decay; but it is in the Catholic Church of God
of which a branch happens to be established by law in this
island that the final authority is to be found. You will find
there all that you need; all the essentials of which I have
been speaking. She uses the sacraments which Christ
ordained, and proposes to us the Faith which He revealed.
Grace and Truth came by Jesus Christ. Grace and truth still
continue to flow to us through the channel of the Church of
England!"

This eloquence, from the mouth of a sincere and pious man,
affects John profoundly; and in a few months time he has
settled down as a communicant member of the Church of
England.

John is sincerely happy in his new home. He finds there all
that his friend has promised him unchanging creeds, the
administration of sacraments, and a prayer-book of
incomparable English. He is attracted by the decent
ceremonial, the culture of his clergy, the music of the choirs,
and the beautiful architecture of the church in which he
worships.

He also finds there what are to him far more important
indications that he has chosen right; he discovers genuine
piety among churchmen, sincerity, enthusiasm, a love of
God, and self-denial. He sees communities of men and
women who have given up all to serve Jesus Christ more
perfectly; clergy and ladies labouring among the poor; vast
and generous benefactions to church objects. It appears to
him that in a hundred ways God has set His seal upon the

Church of England. He has caused her to increase and
multiply; she has branches in at least all English-speaking
lands as well as missions to the heathen. On the one side
she is wealthy and respected; on the other she is devoted
and genuinely religious.

His first doubt as to her divine vocation arises from a sermon
that he attends in an university church. As he sits there one
Sunday he is amazed to hear the preacher, who is an
eminent dignitary and scholar, declare plainly (if words
mean anything) that the corporal resurrection of Christ is
not in its literal sense an article of the faith. He further hears
that the Church of England is not committed to the Virgin
Birth of the SON of God in such a manner that the laity and
even the clergy may not disbelieve it if they will.

He expects, of course, that some notice will be taken of the
sermon by authorities; but beyond the contradiction of it by
the bishop in whose diocese the preacher ministers, in a
sermon preached a few weeks later, nothing takes place.
There is discontent among John's friends, some murmurs, a
protest; and the matter drops.

John succeeds in keeping his dismay to himself; but on
hearing another dignitary of his Church propose a change of
pulpits with his Nonconformist brethren in the ministry, and
state, almost explicitly, that episcopal ordination is no more
than a party custom, he can no longer keep his difficulties
quiet. He consults, therefore, a clerical friend of wide
sympathies, but belonging to the High Church party; and
receives the following answer:

"You must not be dismayed, my dear sir; you must
remember that men are but men; and these, above all,
Englishmen who will have liberty at all costs. I agree with
you that it is terribly sad that our bishops take no action;

that it is scandalous that such doctrines should be
impugned; but I always tell myself, and I tell you the same,
that we are not concerned with what this or that man may
say; we are concerned only with what the Church herself
says explicitly in her creeds, her prayer-book and her
articles."

John objects that the preachers who have offended him
themselves profess obedience to the said creeds and prayer-
book; but that they put a wholly false interpretation upon
them.

"You have said it," answers his friend; "a wholly false
interpretation. The creeds are clear enough, as you confess.
In other words, the Church of England as a whole is
orthodox; it is only her individual ministers who are
unfaithful. That, then, is the bishops affair; not yours or even
mine."

John is not wholly satisfied with this talk of schools of
thought; it seems to him that the divine whom he has
consulted is more latitudinarian than he professes; but for
the present his doubts are quieted.

Upon hearing, however, a few months later, two sermons on
consecutive Sundays one declaring the Sacrament of
Penance to be a divine institution, necessary for the
forgiveness of mortal sins committed since baptism; and the
other denouncing it as a blasphemous fable, invented by
power-loving priests, clean contrary to the pure Gospel of
Christ, his difficulties reassert themselves, and he makes a
journey to London to lay them before a well-known
authority, eminent for his piety, his learning and his self-
denial.

"Where," he begins, "is the witness of the Church of England
of which I have heard so much? I understood that she spoke
clearly on disputed points; and it certainly appears to me
that she is clear enough on these matters which puzzle me
at least her prayer-book is explicit. How, then, is it possible
that her ministers are not silenced when they denounce the
faith she proposes to our belief? "

The clergyman smiled.

"You are on the wrong lines, sir," he answered. "You must not
take a narrow insular view of the Church of England. She is
not an individual, she is but a member of a body; or, in
technical language, she consists here of two provinces of the
Catholic Church. I am a priest, and you a layman, of the
Catholic Church as a whole It is to that that we must look for
guidance. As you say, the provinces in this island are
sufficiently orthodox in the formularies which they use to
allow us to be in communion with them; but it is to the
Undivided Church, supernaturally one all over the world,
that we owe allegiance."

John inquires whether the Church of Rome is part of the
Catholic Church, and is informed that it is and by far the
most important part; she is bolder in her confessions of faith
possibly even too bold in her detailed treatment of certain
doctrines; but, at any rate, far more efficient in her
proclamation of them. It is her ceremonial that should be the
guide of English clergy; her devotional and theological
books that they should study. In one point only is she
certainly unorthodox, and that is in her claim that all must of
necessity pay their allegiance to the Pope of Rome.

John passes over this last point, for it is strange to him; and
recurs once more to his difficulty with regard to the sermons
he has just heard.

"My dear sir," answers his friend, "you cannot be more
grieved than I am; but I assure you that it is comparatively
unimportant. Hold fast to the fact that you are a Catholic,
incorporated and sustained in the Church's supernatural life
by Christ's own sacraments. The gates of hell cannot prevail
against her. Remember that you have been set here by
God's providence to defend a difficult outpost; maintain
your own personal faith and courage by frequenting those
same sacraments; and look for guidance, not to the
conflicting cries of individual preachers, but to the voice of
God Himself, proclaiming, through the mouth of the whole
Catholic Church, the truths of revelation."

Once more John is uplifted and helped by such words, and
returns home confident in his position, and inspired by the
thought that he is a Catholic in a larger sense than he had
dreamed, set by God in an honourable and difficult post.

The following summer he takes his family to France, and, as
he has been directed to do by his adviser, attends Mass in
the Roman Catholic church. But he is not content with this:
since he is a Catholic, he has right to sacraments here as in
England, and on Saturday evening presents himself at the
confessional.

Before he has uttered many sentences, the priest's voice
demands whether he is a Catholic. John, after a moment's
hesitation, answers in all sincerity that he is; but the priest
is not satisfied: Is he a Roman Catholic? Is he in communion
with the Pope of Rome?

No, answersjohn; he is an English Catholic, in communion
with Canterbury and York; he is a member of that branch
which God has established in England.

The priest, understanding his good faith, explains to him
gently that he is unable to give him absolution; this
Englishman is not a Catholic in the Catholic sense of the
word; and, on being pressed, confesses that no Catholic
priest in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Mexico not in the
whole world, can give absolution to any man who is not
under obedience to, and in open communion with, the Pope
of Rome; and John, after protesting against these uncatholic
terms of communion, leaves the church.

He has discovered, therefore, by the time that he returns to
England that the theory held by his latest spiritual adviser is
repudiated by the rest of the Church with which he claims a
supernatural union, and he pays him a visit to demand a
further explanation.

It is then that he receives a full exposition of what has been
called "geographical Christianity."

The Church, he is informed once more, is in many lands. In
England its lawful member is called the Church of England;
in France, it is the Church of France, though incidentally
united to the see of Rome. Yet it is the same Church here as
there; the same faith, the same sacraments.

"How is it the same faith?" asks John, "when in France
Catholics believe that union with the Pope is essential and in
England they do not?"

"That is not a vital point," answers his friend; "the Roman
Catholics have added to the faith in that matter. We must
agree to differ."

A memory comes up like an echo from the past. Has not John
heard that talk before? Was it not precisely that which his
undenominational acquaintances said of such things as

Baptism and Communion? And is it any more possible to say
of this, than of those, that it is not vital?

"Then who is to decide?" he cried.

"The Catholic Church," answered the clergyman.

"But that is begging the question," answered John, in a flash
of illumination. "It is precisely that which has to be decided:
the point is, what is the Catholic Church? For I see the
necessity of having one!"

The clergyman smiled again.

"It is a matter of faith," he said, "of conviction."

Butjohn interrupted him.

"Will you tell me," he said, "a little about the Roman
Catholics? I feel bound to ask that."

When John went away that evening, he was more puzzled
than ever. It seemed that the Roman Catholics were
dangerous people; their priests not altogether trustworthy;
their people unintellectual and uncultured. It appeared, too,
that there was something which his friend called "glamour"
about them, in spite of his admiration for them. Men were
dazzled and stupefied by their worship, the atmosphere of
their churches, the splendour of their ritual.

And yet he felt that he could not but inquire.

First, it was impossible to treat them like a small sect. There
were between five and six millions of them in England, and
about two hundred and fifty millions of them in the whole
world. (- note, this was the very early 20th century)

Secondly, it appeared that they were of a startling
unanimity in the matters of faith so startling that it was
called "rigid and iron uniformity," and that, in spite of the
fact that they consisted of every race, nation, character,
language and colour under the sun. Schools of thought
seemed practically non-existent. And John was weary by now
of being told that flat contradictions were but aspects of one
truth.

Thirdly, it seemed to John that if authority did not lie here, it
lay nowhere.

"It may be all true," he said to himself, "all that I have heard
tonight. It may be that they have added to the faith, that
they are untrustworthy, falsifiers of history, persecutors,
implacable, schismatic. I know that I do not like their
customs, their mumblings of the Communion service, their
innumerable ceremonies, their formalism, their irreverence,
the appearance of their priests, the dirt in their churches. I
do not like them at all. Yet I cannot neglect to inquire what
they have to say for themselves. It certainly seems to me
that they claim monstrous privileges for their Pope; in fact
they seem to set him on the very throne of God, as Saint
Paul said they would. Yet it seems to me also that, so far as I
have inquired, there is no help anywhere else. I have found
the Bible in sufficient as a dogmatic treatise; and the
undenominationalists deceptive in their claim to interpret it.
The Church of England bears no clearer witness, for she has
no living voice to expound the meaning of her own
formularies when they are disputed by her ministers or, at
any rate, she does not raise it.

"Geographical Christianity is simply in comprehensible to
me. I am no scholar, it is true, but yet I believe that Christ
came to teach me truth as well as to scholars. I do not
understand how what is Catholic in France is heretical in

England. And, therefore, it appears to me that unless there is
somewhere an authority commissioned by God to tell me
what to do and believe, an authority which can silence her
servants when they attack her pronouncements, an
authority which possesses and uses her voice to answer new
fancies or corroborate new discoveries unless there is this
some where, the Christian religion appears to me to be little
less than mockery. I am bidden to believe, but am not
informed by God what to believe.

"I must, therefore, look into this new matter; I must read the
Gospels again with the Roman claims in my mind; I cannot
set aside two hundred and fifty millions of Christians who
are united, when my friends are disunited, as unworthy of
attention.

"Lastly, also, it is of course just barely possible though
exceedingly unlikely that there is more in these claims than I
have hitherto been led to believe. Just possibly they may be
true!"

Chapter 2 - Roman Catholic
Characteristics

"I will begin," saysjohn, "in studying the life of Jesus Christ
as described in the Gospels. I cannot explain on what
authority I receive these Gospels as trustworthy, but I must
begin somewhere, and I will assume that they are true. At
any rate they touch me more profoundly than anything I
have ever read."

Here then are a few of the points that he notices in his
course of reading.

First, his attention is arrested by the tone of authority in
which Christ speaks.

Here was one who came as a teacher and prophet to a
nation specially favoured by God a nation which had
received a law at any rate far in advance of the law of any
other nation in its high standard, its appeal to the heart, its
sense of the Divine. Christ acknowledged all this; He spoke
unmistakably of the salvation to be found among the Jews;
He conformed Himself to the requirements of that law.

Yet He appears to have set Himself, with what must have
appeared nothing less than brutality to some of those who
heard Him, to trample deliberately on sacred traditions, holy
prejudices, authorized interpretations, and even parts of the
law itself.

"It was said by them of old time," He said, "yet I say unto
you..." He denounced small pieties, ineffective aspirations
"Not every one that saith...Lord, Lord shall enter into the
kingdom of heaven." When His disciples, thinking to please
Him, pointed reverently to the glorious temple of the King of

heaven, He cried out that not one stone of it should be left
upon an other. While with one breath He indicated the
Scribes and Pharisees as ruling with the authority of Moses,
with another He denounced woe to them, named them
hypocrites and deceivers, and bade His friends beware of
their doctrine. He, as it seemed almost parenthetically,
struck with a biting sentence or two at the whole scheme of
Sabbath-keeping, matured through centuries, and all
designed to the honour of God and repose of men.

His methods then were utterly dissimilar from those that had
worked so well and for so long. He taught not as the Scribes.
Instead of appealing to this Rabbi or that, as was the custom
of the schools, weigh ing the evidence of one commentator
against another, showing what was of faith, what of opinion,
and what for liberty, He spoke now serenely, now sternly,
but always as with personal and final authority; and it was
this characteristic of imperiousness that was especially
marked by those who heard Him. "[They] were astonished at
His doctrine; for He taught them as one having authority,
and not as the Scribes."

Such peremptory methods did not make for peace, any more
than the doctrine which He declared; and He Himself
confessed frankly that it was so. "I came," He said expressly,
"not to send peace, but a sword." "I came," He said implicitly
in a splendid paradox, "not to unite men but to divide them.
The sword of My word shall come down between husband
and wife, mother and child. Families shall be wrecked
through My Gospel, friends estranged, love-ties severed. Not
peace; but a sword."

When John had arrived at this point in his meditations, the
irresistible parallel struck him. Was not all this precisely
what is alleged against the divine claims of the Church of
Rome?

All other denominations with which he has come into
contact lay claim to what is called charity and sweet
reasonableness. The Wesleyan and the Baptist vie with one
another in proclaiming that truth is not vital, that every man
must follow his own conscience, that no man may either
deliver or contradict his brother. The Church of England
rejoices in her own comprehensiveness, cries out that she is
National and therefore must truly represent the mind of the
nation, holds out liberty of thought within wide limits as her
glory and her pride. It is true, reflects John, that there are
men within her who do not, but so long as others are
permitted to contradict them, and to hold opposing views,
the Church of England so far as she has a voice supports
these and not those. It is her desire to support as far as may
be the law of the land (in itself an estimable ambition; but
she carries this so far as still to include among her bishops
those who openly in struct their clergy that when the laws of
Church and State clash, it is the latter that must be obeyed;
for the Church of England is by law established.

John places in contrast with this wide spirit of liberty the
accusations cast against the Church of Rome; and they are
accusations undoubtedly true in substance.

She teaches "not as the scribes."

"I will have no schools of thought," she cries, "within my pale
on matters that have come under my attention. Theologians
may dispute and argue and deduce it is their function to do
so; but when I speak, they must be silent or go out. It was
said by them of old time this or that was allowed in the
Primitive Church I dare say it was; but that was of old time.
Now, I say unto you. I claim to be alive, not dead or
entranced; I claim therefore the right to enlarge and amplify
my statements on matters of doctrine, to reverse, if need be
to elaborate, my decisions on discipline. More than this, the

life that inspires me is divine; it is that same energy that
burned in my Lord, and it is in His tones that I speak, and
with His authority that I define. God has promulgated His
commandments on Sinai and the Mount of Beatitudes; I add
to those my precepts, and all alike bind the conscience of
those that hear.

"I am here to declare God's truth to men, not to reassure
them that there is no such thing, or to content them with a
vague and shifting creed or a declaration that a lack of
precise thinking is the highest mental liberty. But I am here
to tell them truth; for it is the truth and not doubt or
hesitation or indifference that makes them free.

"On matters that touch morality I am ready, if need be, to
contradict with the utmost emphasis merely human
enactments. It is said by them that sit in Parliament, A
divorced man may marry a new wife. I say unto you, He may
not: and I deny my sacraments to those who prefer man to
me in the matter. You tell me that common sense demands
that an innocent woman wedded to a brute should not be
cut off from domestic happiness. I do not care what common
sense says; I declare before God that (brute or saint) she is a
wedded woman till death steps in to free her. You tell me
that I am cruel; that I bring ruin into families wherever I go,
that I divide mother and daughter, father and son, that I am
authoritative, imperious and domineering. I answer that I
come to bring not peace but a sword; that my children have
found and always will find that their foes are those of their
own household, that I am authoritative and imperious, as my
Lord was; for I speak not as other men, not as human
legislators and politicians who prefer peace to truth, not as
scribes who weigh opinion against opinion, but as the organ
of the Supreme voice, and the authorized interpreter of the
Divine Will."

It is too much for John, and he passes to a second point.

A train of thought has been suggested to him by Christ's
words that although He was going to the Father, yet He
would still be with His own until the end of the world.

"Let us picture," says John, "what would have happened if
these words were carnally fulfilled, and Christ were still on
the earth in bodily form. We shall under stand better so what
is the effect of His spiritual presence; for His spiritual
presence, unconfined by laws of space, cannot at any rate
be less effectual than would have been His earthly presence
in Jerusalem or Rome."

First then, with reference to truth, he meditates, how simple
would have been the appeal! When disputes arose, on vital
matters at any rate, they could have been settled within a
few days.

"Tell us," he imagines a deputation say ing, "tell us, Lord,
what is the meaning of Thy words, This is My Body." There
are some of us that are inclined to hold that the words are
literal, and that in the holy Sacrament we have Thy Body
actually and really present upon pur altars. Others of us,
who claim equal piety and learning, declare that such a
thing is impossible, that the significance can be no more
than a symbolical one; others again name the presence
virtual, not real; others declare that the presence is real to
the receiver, not in the bread. From this divergence there are
countless quarrels, disputes and recriminations. We confess
with shame that the sacrament of unity has been for many
amongst us a sacrament of discord and hatred.

"Now can it be doubted," John asks himself, "that an answer
would have been given?

"Well, it is only an imagination. Jesus Christ is not here to
decide the matter and interpret His own dark saying. I go to
this and that teacher, and each tells me the same; it is a
mysterious saying; it is not right to go beyond the words of
Scripture; it must be left as He left it; the truth is to be found
not in theology, but in the loving spirit that tastes and finds
that the Lord is gracious: I must be content yes, all tea chers
tell me this, but one. There is one who is not content so to
leave it, and who claims with awful arrogance to define the
Lord's own words in the terms of a questionable human
philosophy. She sweeps aside Zwinglians, Calvinists,
Lutherans and the rest; and tells me expressly that the
substance of the bread is changed into the substance of the
Body of the Lord; she adds that where the Body is there
must be the Blood, and since Christ is alive and undivided,
where His Body is must be His Soul and His Divinity. She
names for the theologians these two doctrines,
Transubstantiation and Concomitance, and she bids me, who
am a simple layman, worship God and Man, Body, Blood,

Soul and Divinity really actually and literally present upon
her altars."

John turns to his Bible again, grieved at the audacity, and
once more he reads: "Lo, I am with you always, even unto
the end of the world."

He remains a moment staring at the page as the thought
develops.

"If then He is here, my imagination is no imagination, but a
fact. He is here, to decide these questions, to give peace to
troubled minds, to interpret His own dark sayings! Where
then shall I find Him? In England where I am put off with an
evasion amongst those who repudiate any power to lay upon
men's consciences a greater burden than Scripture: in other
words, who refuse to enlighten the intolerable burden of an

obscure and vital text? Or shall I find Him among those who
alone are not afraid to express the meaning of the text in
intelligible language, who do not shrink from catching up a
philosophy for the purpose of further illumination, who, in
other words claim to speak on the authority of Him who first
uttered the dark saying, and to answer men, after Christ's
own method, as they can understand it?

"Is not, therefore, the denial of a power to amplify His words,
a denial of the continuous presence that He promised?"

A reaction of course, or rather a series of them, is always to
be found in every soul that is making any advance in the
intellectual region; there are moments when the reason,
exhausted, allows itself to be dominated once more by the
imagination which surges up from the realm of prejudices,
old faiths, old customs, ideas implanted in childhood or
overheard and assimilated; and for a time asserts itself
fiercely.

I propose to treat here of four such typical assaults which
took place at various times in John's mind. The first was
named "Universal Distrust."

"Why is it," he asked himself, "that the whole world is so
leagued against the Roman Catholics? After all, the common
sense of the world is a divine instinct, because it is so
intensely human. I do not mean the common sense of
notoriously bad people, of atheists, immoral, outlaws; but
the sober feeling of God-fearing nations. In England, for
example, this distrust is no less obvious than it was in
Elizabeth's reign, although it takes a less vivid form. A man
applies for a situation; his testimonials are satisfactory, and
all goes well until his religion is discovered to be of this
denomination. After that he is told that he need not present
himself again. A young man wins a scholarship, and the

Fellows of the college on learning of his faith, strain every
nerve to get rid of him. A Roman priest walking harmlessly
down the street is pointed out and eyed as if he were carry
ing an infernal machine in his tail pocket. A convert is
treated among his friends as if he were newly come from a
lunatic asylum; he is either humoured or contradicted on
every possible occasion. In France there is no need to give
illustrations beyond mentioning that that country has taken
down the cross from the Pantheon for the third or fourth
time, and the crucifix from her law-courts; she has been
compelled to get rid of thousands of her citizens for no crime
but that of their religion; she is contemplating making the
wearing of the clerical or religious habit in public an act of
rebellion. Spain, where the Roman Church still holds sway, is
despised by the entire civilized world. Italy is full of
confiscated monasteries, and the Pope is a sort of prisoner in
his own house and grounds. Ireland, as is well known, is the
one sore spot in the British Empire."

He turns once more to the Gospels and Acts, and is
confronted by the following remarks: "Ye shall be hated of all
men." That certainly cannot be applied to any denomination
other than the Roman Catholic. And there is no exception
made as to who shall hate. It is not the atheists, outlaws,
adulterers who shall hate; on the contrary it is the reproach
of the Roman Catholics as it was of Christ Himself, that she is
the friend of sinners, and therefore presumably the abettor
of sin. "All men" includes just those persons of whom John
has been thinking the sober, Goo-fearing, civilized
inhabitants of the world; in fact, Christ Himself, amplifying
His warning, declares that the enemies of His friends shall
bring them before religious and civil courts and shall believe
their own hostility to be an act of service to God.

"If ye were of the world, the world should love its own; but
because ye are not of the world, therefore the world hateth

you."

The world that is to say once more, the embodiment of the
common-sense, practicable, reasonable, civilized spirit. It
was this that called the Apostles mad and drunk, that
named them upsetters of the world, seditious, disloyal,
godless; it was this that accused their children a century
later of nameless crimes in the dark, of impiety and atheism.
And it is precisely this spirit today that in England distrusts
Roman priests, denounces the Roman system, despises
converts; that in France has torn down the crucifix, that
smiles pityingly at Spain and Ireland, and would if it could
drown them in the meshes of its own broad liberty.

John revolts at his own reflections.

"This is very well," he cries, "but how useless to pretend that
these papists are hated because of their piety because of
their love for Jesus Christ! It is their sin, their inconsistency
with their own standards, and not their holiness that brings
them under suspicion. No amount of rhetoric can whitewash
Xystus III, Innocent VIII, Julius II, Mary Tudor, Torquemada
and the thousands of criminals known to history. Ye shall
know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns or
figs of thistles? It is useless for persecutors to pose as
persecuted, for slanderers as calumniated. It is not
persecution for society to defend herself against those who
subvert the laws of her life. If any proof is wanting that the
Roman Church is not the kingdom of heaven, it is found in
the character of her citizens."

"The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a net."

"It is not therefore," answers the second voice in his soul, "it
is not a select society of perfected souls; it is rather a huge
vessel that sweeps into itself good and bad; saints and

sinners, ethereal souls and deformed monsters of carnality.

To point to outcasts of society within the Church's borders is
no more than to demonstrate that the charity of God is
larger than the charity of man. To conceive of the Church as
other than this is to deny her catholicity, her divinity, her
adequacy to human needs, her bottomless love, her
imperishable hope. It was this that was done by the Lollards,
the Lutherans, the Independents, the Marcionites, and a
hundred Gnostic sects whose names are almost forgotten in
consequence. They were for ever crying, Come out of her,
my people. But the kingdom of heaven is not an aristocracy
of saintliness, or an exhibition of prize souls; it is not even a
sieve which separates; it is a net which gathers and
includes.

"Even if all historians exaggerations were literally true, it
would not affect the Church's claim by the weight of a hair;
for it is frankly acknowledged that the higher the elevation,
the deeper the fall. A bad Catholic is the worst of men; for
his type and his leader is no other than Judas Iscariot. The
corruption of a highly developed organism is infinitely fouler
than the decaying remnant of a jelly-fish. If truth is desired
and not a verbal victory coram populo, you must set Saint
Francis of Assisi beside Innocent VIII, Saint Catherine of
Siena beside the papal court before whom she spoke; you
must set the thousands of saints known and unknown
beside the thousands of sinners whose names have been
raked together for so many centuries and with such
scrupulous zeal by the Accuser of the Brethren."

"That too is a pretty bit of pleading," says John. "But how
then is it possible to defend, not the exceptional sinners, but
the frauds daily and hourly carried on in the name of
religion? We have heard of the Rood of Boxley and the priest
who pulled the string to make the image of his Saviour weep
fraudulent tears of blood; of Saint Januarius, whose blood is

still supposed to liquefy four times a year in the hands of the
Archbishop of Naples; of the hysterical girls at Lourdes cured
either by the violence of their emotions or by a possibly
medicinal virtue in the water of the Virgin's Well.

"What of saints who rose three miles above the surface of
the earth, of martyrs before whom the beasts crouched in
adoration, of bishops who cure the sick, of priests who raise
the dead, of ecstatice who bleed from hands and feet and
side every Friday in the year from twelve to three, and rave
in Hebrew and Greek; of lunatics who shrink and cry out at
the touch of a little salt water over which a sinful man has
murmured a few words of Latin!

"Is there any other body of Christians in Christendom which
still believes in present-day miracles? The president of the
Wesleyan Conference does not read out among his statistics
a list of miracles wrought by local preachers. The entire
common sense of the most reasonable and pious people of
the time is unanimous on the fact that miracles were indeed
necessary for the establishment of the Church on earth, but
have now passed away with the demand for them from a
world that has its eyes fixed on higher and more spiritual
manifestations of God's power. It is this one intolerable and
intolerant body that calls itself the Catholic Church that
persists in the face of reason, experience and science, in
declaring that the age of miracles is not past. We must not
blame her over much; she is still burdened by the dark
heritage of the middle ages, and her claim to be identical
with the credulous and priest-ridden institution that
obscured men's minds and dominated them by a mixture of
credulity and fraud.

"It is this one Church," and John paused in his declamation.

"These signs shall follow them that believe: in My name shall
they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;
they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly
thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the
sick, and they shall recover.

"Is it conceivable, then," asked John of himself after a pause,
"that I have been a little hasty in concluding that, because
some knaves have been detected, therefore all men are
dishonest; that I have been guilty of unjustifiable a priori
reasoning, and have concluded against all miracles from the
premises that they did not happen?"

"We must take a larger view," he cried; "this by-lane warfare
is useless. Look at the Roman body as a whole once more its
iron system, its artificial uniformity; that crushes out
individuality, that forces catch-words into men's mouths, the
same holy expression on their faces, and the same barbaric
vestments on their shoulders. It is a superb instance of
human genius and patience; it is like the drill of an army,
the movement of a vast machine: this crank turns this wheel
and that lever.

Of course it is imposing and terrifying, until one learns the
secret. But how utterly unlike to the free, pure, spiritual
union of Christ and His simple servants, the union of charity
and hearts and wills, the union that is divine because it is
deep! Let me look again at the Gospels."

"That they all may be one...that the world may believe that
Thou hast sent Me to The world," repeats the second voice in
his soul. "And you, John, in spite of your plain common
sense, are perpetually thinking of the scholar and the saint.
What have you to do with them? It was not to them that
Christ made His vast appeal; but to the weary, the heavy-
laden, the sinners, the dull, the unimaginative. His royal

road is for the wayfarers and fools who walk there among the
redeemed to Zion;t it is for you, John, and such as you, that
He made that road and built His heavenly city, not for the
scholar who spins webs and rejoices in his elaborateness,
but for the man who can become little as a little child. It was
for the simple that He set up His sign-posts and built His
straight walls.

"In other words, this unity for which He prayed was exactly
that which you have been condemning. It was to be a unity
which the world might recognize which was to be obvious,
plain, notorious, evident; not a unity visible only to the eyes
of seers, still less a unity fashioned out of the weaving of
dreams and desires in a study-chair.

"Does the world acknowledge the unity of Baptists,
Wesleyans and Plymouth Brethren; or the unity of the
Church of England? Is not parliament at this moment
seeking to remove the scandal of her disunity? Are not the
divisions of Christendom apart from what you call the
Church of Rome the one supreme stumbling-block to the
evangelization of the world which Christ desired so
passionately? And is it not to the Church of Rome (and
because of her iron uniformity, at which you have just been
sneering) that the anxious, puzzled wanderer looks with
approval, if not with hope? Can you, in fact, point to any
unity but hers that arrests for an instant the attention of the
irreligious, the careless, and the independent? The world
may hate that unity it has taught you a number of phrases
to throw at it it may explain it away, as you have done; but
there is no sort of question but that it acknowledges it to be
the most startling and arresting fact in Christendom.

"Look at that sentence again: That they may be one that the
world may know?" John is silenced; but he is not convinced.
There are fifty questions yet to be answered; his whole soul

revolts against the conclusion. Yet for the present he is
silenced.

For he has learnt that precisely those things which had
served him hitherto against those intolerable claims of what
he prefers to call the "Italian Mission" are the very points
which she puts forward as her credentials.

She is authoritative? Yes; because her Master was.

She despises conventions, contradicts human laws, divides
families? Yes; be cause her Master did.

She turns the accusation of supplanting Christ into a claim
to possess Him in her heart, mind and mouth.

She welcomes the distrust of the world; because He said
that it would be so.

She is not afraid to gather up sinners and keep them, even
though they pervert her policy and misrepresent her spirit;
be cause it is her function to sweep humanity dregs and all
into her net.

She is not ashamed to count miracles among her jewels;
because He said that His Bride should wear them.

She rejoices in her self-control, the rigidity of her attitude,
the subordination of every member of her being to her
supreme will; because it is at His wish that it is so, that the
world, whom He loves and for whom He gave Himself, may
recognize her as His queen, and Himself as King.

John therefore is a little thoughtful as he closes the Gospels.

Chapter 3 - The Petrine Claims

John's next important act is to buy a penny Catechism. He
has seen what the Gospels say about the Church, and he
now desires to see what the Church says about the Gospels.

He is bewildered as he turns the pages. On this he learns
that the Catholic Church does not pray to relics; on this he
reads what he conceives to be a willful mistranslation of the
apostle James; on that he perceives that the Roman
Catholics are not forbidden a knowledge of the Ten
Commandments, although they arrange them in a curious
and suspicious manner. Then once more he reminds himself
that he has not bought the Catechism in order to study
secondary matters or to criticize, but to learn what it is that
the Roman Church says about itself and its constitution.

He turns therefore to the Apostles Creed, and finally settles
upon question eighty-seven.

"Why is the Bishop of Rome the Head of the Church?

"The Bishop of Rome is the Head of the Church because he is
the successor of Saint Peter, whom Christ appointed to be
the Head of the Church."

"Now here," says John, "is the root of the whole matter. I
understand clearly that there must be a Church, if the
Revelation of God is to be intelligible. Here then is a plain
statement. It may be true or un true I suspect it to be
untrue. If it is untrue, I need look no further; and if it is true,

I need look no further. If it is untrue, I may as well stop
where I am and get along as I best can, for I certainly cannot
join a Church that is based on falsehood. If it is true, I cannot
possibly stop where I am. It is absurd to say that I can be a

member of the Church, if I am not in subordination to and in
communion with its head. Everything else is secondary to
this Anglican Orders, invocation of saints, mariolatry. Here is
a clear issue. And now I see that I must turn to the New
Testament once more, examine the texts quoted in this
Catechism, and see what I can make of them."

Once more therefore he lays his Bible open, provides himself
with pen, ink and paper, and begins his study.

It would occupy us far too long if we were to examine all the
notes that John makes on the subject (although I append
them at the conclusion of this book). Some of them are
perhaps, too, a little fantastic; they would be certainly
fantastic if they stood without support. In all, they amount to
twenty-nine arguments in support of the statement of the
Catechism; but, in brief summary, they amount to this:

Simon Peter plainly has some sort of leadership among the
apostles. His name occurs first in all lists of the apostolic
College, and in one passage the very word "first" is used of
him, although he was not the first called, nor the one
expressly distinguished by being "the disciple whom Jesus
loved." He is treated as the spokesman of the rest by the
Jews; he heads every deputation to the Master, he opens
debates, If he utters the first anathema after Pentecost, he
works the first Church miracle,tt he preaches the first
sermon.

"Yes, yes," says John, "he was born a leader of men: he was
naturally ardent, strong, enthusiastic, influential. Those
arguments prove nothing more than this. Let me examine
moreover particularly the texts on which the Papists lay such
especial stress. They are of a rather more remarkable nature
than the others."

"Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called
Cephas, which is by interpretation a stone..."

"Now this," reflects John, "does not really prove anything. We
know that it was our Lord's custom to give names to His
apostles; for example, He called James and John Boanerges,
or Sons of Thunder, because of their hot, wrathful spirit.

Peter then was so-called because he was of a strong,
unyielding temperament. The Gospels will give no doubt
abundant proof of this."

John therefore examines the Gospels again, and is
completely puzzled. He finds four or five facts recorded
there that appear to prove the exact opposite. Peter tries to
walk on the water, and fails be cause his faith is too feeble;
he is terrified at the thought of his Lord's sufferings, and is
bitterly rebuked for his weakness; after swearing that he
would sooner die than forsake his Master, and after having
been expressly warned on the subject, he three times over
denies Him because of the jeers of some servant-girls; after
having previously run for his life with the rest from
Gethsemane. In other words, he is an impulsive, ardent,
inconstant, weak, vacillating man.

"He might well have been called Fire" muses John, "because
of his hot zeal; or Water, because of his weakness; but Stone
seems the most singular misapplication of a metaphor that I
have ever heard of. Yet Christ knew what was in man: He
read hearts and diagnosed characters as only God Almighty
can do. I do not understand; this is beyond me."

John bears his puzzle about with him for a while, and
gradually some kind of explanation begins to dawn.

There are two kinds of names, he reflects again, given to
people: personal and official. For example, at the grammar-

school where he was educated there was a boy nicknamed
Cat, because of his odd eyes and his way of walking. That is
perfectly intelligible; it is a personal label. But there are
other names that are not personal. The King of Spain is
called "His Most Catholic Majesty"; King George II of
England, with all his predecessors, since the Reformation at
least, and all his successors till the present day, was called
in the Church of England Prayer-book a "most religious and
gracious king"; King Edward VII is named "Defender of the
Faith." Now, there have been kings of Spain who were not
"most Catholic"; George II was neither religious nor gracious;
Edward VII is certainly not a Defender of the Faith in the
sense in which the title was originally bestowed upon the
nursing Father of the English Reformation. Yet no one
proposes that these names should be expunged or retained
according to the personal characters or exploits of those who
bear them. They are official, not personal labels.

"Very well," reflects John. "Then if Peter is not a personal
label fastened upon Simon Bar-jona, must I not consider the
possibility whether it is not an official title?"

He turns the pages of the Gospels again.

"Thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build My Church:
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

"What then is the theory of Papist controversialists?" asks
John of himself; and in answer he confesses that it is
something after this manner:

Simon is Peter, not because he is a stone by nature, or even
by grace, but because in the inscrutable decrees of God he
is chosen to be the foundation-stone of an institution which
Christ names His Church. There is only one Church in
Christendom which claims to be built upon that apostle; and

that the one whose centre is Rome, where Peter ruled and
where his body lies. As for the gates of hell, is there any
other institution in Christendom which compares with this
for immovability, authority and impressiveness? One was
built upon the fire of Luther, another upon the piety of
Wesley, another upon the lusts of a king and the
independent spirit of a nation. These have stood for varying
periods, and not one of them for more than four hundred
years. And the rain has descended, and the floods come,
and the winds blown and beaten upon these houses; and
the world that looks upon them already mocks at the
cracking walls, the tottering pinnacles, the agitated faces of
those who look out of the windows, the efforts of those who
under-pin and mortar. The "house divided against itself shall
not stand"; how much less a house not only divided against
itself, but, as well, founded originally upon the sands of
men's passions and fancies plastered with untempered
mortar, fashioned on other lines than those of the heavenly
Architect. Can the piety, the agony, the sincerity of its
inhabitants keep a home that has not God for its Father?

And as for that other, that has stood for nineteen centuries,
even by the confession of its foes the rain has descended
too, a rain of tears and protest and questioning; the floods of
revolt have lifted up their voice; whole nations have poured
against it, strong nations from the north; the hot winds have
stormed from the mouth of hell; the thunder-clouds of men's
passionate denunciation and curses have hidden it from the
eyes of those who should have been its children; and when
the rain has ceased, and the floods ebbed, and the winds
lulled, and the clouds passed, it is standing there still,
secure from roof to basement, so perfectly polished that
enemies have called it unnatural, and friends supernatural;
so immovable that men have mocked and called it a prison;
so serene that they have proclaimed it must be full of
internal strife; so beyond the construction of human art that

they have argued that the Man of Sin has surely built it. And
it is this house, unfallen and unchanged, that is built upon a
man whose name God called Rock.

"A grossly unfair, exaggerated, intemperate defence," muses
John indignantly to himself. "These Papist controversialists
have a taste for rhetoric, but none for justice. But what,
exactly, is the answer?"

"I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven;
and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in
heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be
loosed in heaven."

"Now here," says John to himself, "is a very extraordinary
sentence. The only text comparable to it is that in which
Christ gives to all His apostles power to remit and retain
sins. But I cannot honestly set one by the other; for the
second is after all only what all bishops and priests claim for
themselves. It appears certainly as if to Peter were
committed the keys themselves, and to the others only their
occasional use. This is a far more emphatic sentence, and
addressed to one man only: whatever the others received
afterwards, he received also with them; and he seems to
receive something more besides by this unique commission.
Now this commission, whatever it was, may have died with
Peter; it is possible. Let me see first whether there is any one
on earth who claims it. If, on the other hand, it was not a
personal privilege, but one committed to all the apostles
alike, then I shall find many claimants, and shall be obliged
to attempt a decision between them."

John sets to work to consider; and he finds it a simpler
matter than he had thought. He looks round upon the heads
of various denominations the Archbishop of Canterbury, the
President of the Congregational Union, General Booth, and

the President of the Wesleyan Conference and in his
imagination he puts to them all what he conceives to be a
fair, if rhetorical, paraphrase of the passage, in the form of a
question.

"Do any of you," he asks, "claim all that this sentence
involves? Do you claim to hold the keys of the kingdom of
heaven? I will not be put off by a reference to the loosing
power of gospel-preaching. If Christ had meant that, He
would not have used this extraordinarily misleading image.
No; I will have a definite answer. Do you claim to unlock or
lock heaven at your will with, of course, God's assistance?

Do you claim, what is a corollary of this, that all men who
wish to enter heaven must, in some sense, make application
to you for admittance. In other words, do you claim universal
jurisdiction over the entire world, kings, governments,
republics? Do you claim then, any of you, that you are lord
of the world, father of princes and kings; that your lightest
words require attention, and that your heavier sentences
bind the conscience; that heaven and earth move with your
movements (for all this is involved, it seems to me, in some
sense, in these awful words of Christ); that, to sum up
plainly, He who has the government upon His shoulder, has
put the insignia of His kingdom into your hands; that He
who is Himself the door, has given you the key?"

John waits, a little excited by his own paraphrase; and then
his heart echoes what he knows would be the answer of
those he is questioning.

"A thousand times, No! Who is this that speaketh
blasphemies? There is no such power on earth! You are
derogating from Christ's honour. It is He who has opened the
kingdom of heaven to all believers; if He is the door, He is
wide open, and His people enter in through Him alone. Men

can do no more than point through Him who is the way, to
Him who is the door, for they are both one."

"Even my priests," cries one voice, "can do no more than
declare and pronounce to His people, being penitent, the
absolution and remission of their sins." And the chorus goes
on. "But you have said far more than this. You pretend that
one man's action is necessary for the bestowal of God's free
redemption. You would destroy the freedom of the Gospel;
the open access to one Father through Jesus Christ His Son.
You are an enemy of Christ if you believe what you say, and
a calumniator if you do not, and in either case a destroyer of
the liberty of the children of God, which He purchased for
them with His Blood."

"Then this tremendous sentence," answers John in equal
indignation, "is no more than rhetoric a splendid phrase,
sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. If that is so, I demand
to know why such words were ever used. Does the Wisdom
of the Father, of deliberation or carelessness, employ
language that promises so much and signifies so little? If
there is no claimant..."

"Stop, I claim it."

And John turns to see an old man dressed in white standing
on the steps of the altar. Above him is a dome with these
words written round it in gigantic letters; and beneath him is
the body of the Apostle.

"I claim it. I am an outcast from the world, and a prisoner in
my own house. I am a sinful man like him from whom my
title is descended. I have passions, weakness and
temptations as he had. I have no immunity from sin, no
safeguard against falling beyond that which may be found in
the mercy of my God and the prayers of my people. I may

deny my Lord as some say that Liberius did; I may err in my
private faith as John XXII did; I may falter, or give an obscure
answer as Honorius did. Yet I claim it, and I bear the keys
below my triple crown to shew that I bear them in my hand.
In the strength of Him who called me Peter, I am not afraid
to use them. I may err in all else, but not in that for which I
am set here; what I bind is bound in heaven; what I loose is
loosed in heaven. For to me it was said through Peter; and
though a hundred Popes are gone, Peter stands here still...I
claim it, I, Pius the Tenth, alias Peter. Does any dispute it
with me?"

Then the mild voice ceases; the vision fades, and John is left
wondering.

Once more John turns to the Gospel; and reads how Jesus
Christ stood one morning on the beach, with His disciples
round Him, and His faithless lover at His feet; and how three
times He pierced that warm sorrowful heart by a question.

If ever a man has forfeited all claim on his Master's
confidence, it is Peter who kneels here now. He has been
made a stone, and he has yielded like water. He has received
the keys, and he has denied that he knows the door. And in
token of this he is called by his old name, which he bore
before the net of Galilee was transfigured into the net of God
S kingdom: "Simon, son of Jonas, lovestthou Me?"

And then under a third image three times repeated, mingled
with the rebuke, his commission is reaffirmed: "Feed My
lambs... Feed My sheep... Feed My sheep."

He is made then, John considers, shepherd of souls; guide of
wanderers; support of the weary. He is to feed Christ's flock,
and gently lead those that are with young. If the words of
the Good Shepherd mean anything, they must mean this.

There are others standing by: John whom "Jesus loved";
James who was the first to die for Him; Andrew who was the
first to be cal led;t but it is not to this man or that that the
Lord speaks; but to one man more faithless than them all.

There are no exceptions to the flock. Not the Jews only from
whom he sprang; or the Gentiles to whom he went; or the
Romans who were to lead him whither he would not. It is
simply Christ's lambs, Christ's sheep.

"You the foundation, the porter and the fisherman, who
trembled at the onslaught of hell; who ran from your trust at
the noise of feet and the glare of torches; who dropped your
net and denied three times that you knew Me in Galilee you
are to be the shepherd of those for whom I laid down My
life."

Again John demands whether there is any who claims to hold
the crook of universal jurisdiction.

From Canterbury comes the first answer.

"I do not claim it. I claim it only for those of my own race. In
England, Yes, a primacy of jurisdiction; in Ireland, Scotland
and America a primacy of honour only. For all Christ's flock,
No."

"Then this is not said to your Grace," answers John.

From other chairs come more indignant denials.

"I do not claim it," cries a voice in Exeter Hall. "Neither this
nor anything like it! Thank God we have done with such
tyrannical assumptions. We abolished priestcraft and
interference between a man's soul and his Maker when we
cut off Laud's head, and threw a stool in Edinburgh. Men are
not sheep! Our stern old Puritan ancestors died to prove

their manhood; and we their stern posterity are ready to die
in the same cause. Your priest-ridden law-courts are filled
with our martyrs in that quarrel; in thousands of English
homes your suggestion would be scorned. For Englishmen
have learned at last that no man has a right to dictate to
them the terms of salvation or the clauses of God's
redemptive contract. We owe no allegiance to either foreign
or home prelates to none but God speaking in the
conscience. We are free, sturdy, self-reliant, Bible-nurtured,
determined British citizens; ready to answer to our Maker for
what we do and believe. We leave tyranny and catechisms
and creeds, together with incense, idolatry and superstition
to those benighted Papists and Ritualists still labouring
under the medieval yoke which we have cast off for ever. We
are men, not sheep. How dare you call us that?"

John turns away.

"This may be worldly wisdom," he says, "but not divine. It
was not so that the Good Shepherd spoke. Men are sheep, of
whom I am the weakest and most foolish. See how they
follow one another through the hedges that God's law has
planted; how when vice is a fashion it ceases to be vice; how
they drink of poisoned waters and eat deadly food; how they
follow beaten tracks and think that they have found out a
road for themselves; how confident when they think
themselves alone; how helpless when they fall!

"Surely they need care and tenderness and guidance and
chastisement. Did not the Good Shepherd say so? And is
there no one who will give it them? Is there no one who will
cease to flatter, and will tell them their foolishness; who will
lead them to green pastures and make them to lie down by
waters of comfort; who will cry to them when the wolf is
coming; who will seek and save that which is lost?* And
above all, is there no one who will tell them that they are

one flock, not many that there is "neither Greek nor Jew,
barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all and in
all" who will gather them when they are scattered in the
cloudy and dark day, and call to them with a voice that they
know that there may be, as Christ Him self said, one fold and
one shepherd.

And again that humble voice comes from Rome:

"Yes, I claim all this; for I am Peter, shepherd of Christians
and vicar of Christ. It was to me that Christ said long ago in
Galilee, Feed My lambs . . .feed My sheep! That voice is still
in my ears, and I am not ashamed to obey it. When men
flatter men, I am not ashamed to call them sheep and treat
them so. When men talk of freedom and energy, I tell them
that obedience is better still. I am not ashamed to call this
food bad, and to bid all that will hear me not to approach it;
and that good, and encourage them to feed upon it. I appeal
both by love and wrath by crook and staff. I draw this
frightened creature towards me, and I drive that infected
sinner from my flock. I recognize no distinctions of race,
colour or birth; they are all Christ's sheep, and therefore all
are mine. The English and the Indian alike are committed to
me, and I rule them with the same rod within the same
hurdles. Other sheep I have sheep who are not yet of this
fold* and to them I am as zealous as to those that know me.

I stretch out my hands all day long, as I have stretched them
for centuries, giving the same call as I did a thousand years
ago, knowing that one day they too will hear my voice, as
my Master promised. And already they are coming back in
thou sands from the northern hills where their fathers led
them.

"And I do all this, through the scorn of men and the howling
of wolves, and the forgetfulness or ignorance or obstinacy of
those that are already mine, because it was the Good

Shepherd who set me here and bade me rule. I am ready to
lay down my life for them as He did, and as I have done
already myself before Nero, as well as in Clement and Urban
and Gregory: for their sake I die daily, as Paul did. For I am
Peter, waiting till my Master Himself comes back to ask me
of the flock, the beautiful flock which He gave into my
charge. Is there any who disputes my crook with me?"

John turns away in anguish and longing. He has a hundred
questions yet; but he desires as never before to be ruled by
one who is not ashamed to rule, and to be guided by one
who claims to have the authority. Why! is he not after all,
then, Christ's lamb?

But the illusion passes as the chorus of protest breaks put
from controversialists.

"My dear sir, have you distinguished properly between
Petros and Petra? Have you studied it in the original Greek?
Have you considered that Christ spoke in Aramaic, and all
the questions that flow from that? Have you consulted Dr
So-and-So's writings, and reflected on the example of Mr
What's-his-name, who left the fold about which you talk so
finely? he didn't find it all so sweet and peaceful as you
pretend; you should hear his stories! Have you had a good
long talk with Father Some body-Else, who is a profound
scholar, and has studied these questions far more deeply
than you ever could or can study? Have you meditated upon
the amazing revival of religious life in England during the
last seventy years? What do you make of Honorius, Liberius,
and all the rest of the pretended shepherds who give the lie
by their own words to their own pretensions? Those texts
cannot possibly mean what you seem to think they mean. It
is utterly unlike the whole teaching and example of Christ,
who taught not by definition, but by parable and metaphor
and dark saying. The Church is built not on Peter the merest

controversialist can tell you that but upon Peter's faith upon
his confession that Jesus was divine; it was only a personal
privilege. Or if not that, it was upon the Faith that is the
Incarnation. For God S sake put away these faithless
thoughts. Or, if you cannot, at least study hard for several
years before you presume to form an opinion. And when you
have studied, you will be no more competent than before:
for surely you will not presume to put yourself in
competition with Dr Pusey, or Dr Chalmers, or Robertson of
Brighton, or of five hundred others alive at this moment, and
five thousand more yet unborn. My dear sir, pause before
you commit yourself irrevocably to this appalling piece of
intellectual arrogance."

John shakes himself free.

"I am a simple man," he cries, "whom Christ came to save. It
is utterly and ridiculously impossible that salvation can
depend upon profound scholarship. Some of those
difficulties you mention I have considered; others I am going
to consider; others I am not going to be such a fool as to
consider at all, for, as you say, I am in competent to do so.

"But I do not care if I am incompetent. It was the
incompetent that Christ came to teach and save. And
therefore in vital and fundamental matters, such as the
identity of the Catholic Church, I am as capable of deciding
as Dr Pusey or Dr Anybody-Else, for their need is no greater
than mine.

"Christ said that the sheep would know His voice; and that a
stranger they would not follow. Therefore I am going to
listen, and I shall be obliged if you will let me alone and give
over shouting. Perhaps I may be quite wrong; I don't know
yet. But I hear a voice saying, Follow Me! and I must have a
little peace and quietness before I can know whether it is the

Good Shepherd calling, or whether it is some one imitating
His voice.

"Kindly, then, let me alone. I am going to listen, to question
my own heart, and to pray."

Chapter 4 - Development

There is yet one great difficulty to John's mind as he regards
the claim of Rome to represent the Catholic Church of Christ.

He would express it as follows:

"Imagination is as much the gift of God as intellect. Now, so
far as intellect is concerned, I acknowledge that it is hard to
answer the Petrine argument. I under stand that, historically,
Peter was the first Bishop of Rome, and Pius the last; and I
cannot myself answer directly the presumption that Pius has
succeeded to the prerogative as well as to the See of Peter;
but my imagination, my intuition, my native sense, steps in
and tells me that it is impossible.

"An Anglican said to me the other day that it always seemed
to him that if Saint Paul came back to earth he would find
himself at home neither at High Mass in St Peter's nor at
Evensong in his own cathedral in London, but in some such
place as a Salvation Army shelter. This remark has haunted
me. I suppose my friend satisfies himself somehow that in
spite of his feeling, he is right in worship ping at Saint Paul
s; but I am not sure that I am so easily contented with Saint
Peter's.

"For, place side by side the worship, the dogmatic system,
the ecclesiastical organization of the Apostolic Church, with
that of the present day, and see how utterly unlike one is to
the other.

"Look at that elaborate baldachino, those lights, that
tabernacle. Observe those three priests at the altar, their
antique dress, of which even the cut is regulated by the
rubrics; watch their ordered movements, their gestures and

postures; listen to the careful singing, the unreal monotone
and minor thirds; notice the silence of the people. The whole
affair is certainly stately and impressive; but it is a kind of
holy drama, a sacred dance; it is utterly unlike the free
spontaneous worship of the Primitive Church.

"Look at Saint Paul in his upper room; notice his fervent
reality, his unfettered eloquence; the ease of the people
sitting on the floor and window-seats. Observe the way he
takes the bread and wine into his hands; hear the simple
words; mark the absence of ceremonial, the bare table, the
guttering lamp, and the natural movements of the
congregation; now this man prays, now that, as the spirit
directs.

"Or put Peter and Pius side by side. Peter, the old weather¬
beaten fisherman, shuffling along the streets of Rome, going
down with his lamp into the catacomb, where the faithful are
assembled to hear what he has to say; notice the absence of
homage and pomp and circumstance! And then Pius,
crowned and robed like a heathen god, going in his sedia
gestatoria, with cardinals, chamberlains and monsignori in
purple and ermine and scarlet before, and the great fans
behind; listen to the roars of the people to the pope-king,
the shrilling of the silver trumpets; compare the worldly
splendour and show of this with the natural Christian
simplicity of that!

"Compare the doctrine of this age and that; put the
Ethiopian eunuch's confession, I believe that Jesus Christ is
the Son of God," beside the penny Catechism, with its
elaborate statements and deductions and arguments. If the
eunuch was a good Catholic, why did he not have to repeat
the Creed of Pope Pius V before his baptism? If Mrs So-and-
So, received into the Church yesterday, was an apostolic
Christian, why was not Philip's demand enough?

"Lastly, put the free movement of the early Church beside
the highly organized system of the present day, with its
dioceses, vicariates, metropolitan sees, missions; put
serious-faced Priscilla beside Sister Mary Joseph Aloysius of
the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus; plain Timothy beside His
Grace the Most Reverend John Archbishop of Mesopotamia.

"It is simply ridiculous to say that these are the same! Did
Saint Peter sit for three hours every Saturday afternoon in a
carved oak confessional with his office book, candle, and
purple-stoled cotta? Is it possible to conceive Timothy
singing Pontifical High Mass in his cathedral church in Crete,
and publishing a plenary indulgence on the feast of the
Sacred Stigmata of Saint Maria Angela di Sisto on the usual
conditions? No, no!

"I am aware that this argument of the imagination strikes as
shrewdly at the Church of England as at the Church of Rome
for it is just as hard to imagine Titus singing Evensong in Ely
Cathedral, or Saint Bartholomew preaching at harvest
festival from a pulpit decked with pumpkins for the question
is (scarcely a question!) Are we not all wrong together? And
ought we not to revert honestly to primitive methods if we
are going to claim primitive prerogatives?"

Now if John had consulted a theologian, he would have had
some facts recalled to his attention which had escaped it. He
would have been reminded that, after all, St Peter probably
used some of the same words at Mass that Pius uses; that
Saint Paul published an indulgence in his second Epistle to
the Corinthians* and heard a large number of spiritualists
confessions at Ephesus; and that the said spiritualists
certainly made acts of contrition, confession and satisfaction
for we are expressly told so and presumably received
absolution so that the homage given to Saint Peter by the
faithful was far in excess of that offered to Pius X, for the

shadow of the present Pope has never yet been used for
medicinal purposes;! that the Ethiopian eunuch underwent
a long and careful instruction from the deacon before being
admitted to baptism; that the differentiation of orders and
functions began immediately after Pentecost and so forth.

But John did not consult this theologian.

He went for a walk instead on an autumn day; he picked up
an acorn and put it in his pocket; he met a child in a
perambulator, and he attended some athletic sports. Then
he went home again.

Then he took the acorn out of his pocket and began to
consider, sitting at his table.

"How remarkable it is," he said to himself, "that so small a
thing contains such enormous powers! Normally, if I had not
picked this up, it would have sunk into the ground and
turned brown; then it would have cracked and put out a
white finger. The white finger would have ascended to the
light and turned yellow, and then brown again. After a year
or so it would have put out one leaf in spring, which would
have fallen in the autumn; the next year two leaves, and so
on. Even if I put it in the ground now, by the time that Jack's
children are old people, there will be an oak large enough to
sit under, with branches, leaves and acorns of its own. A
crow which would eat this acorn at one mouthful now, could
build his nest in fifty years in the tree which it is capable of
becoming.

"Or the child that I saw this afternoon, with its dimpled red
face, its feeble fingers, its little legs which can kick but not
walk, its mouth which can cry but not speak, its will so
wholly the slave of circumstance, so pitiably at the mercy of
a pin that child, if it lives, may grow up into an athlete like

those I saw at the sports, with arms and legs of steel,
rippling muscles, thin tanned face, a will as tense as a sinew
at full stretch.

"Now, if the Church of God was like that, I might be able to
understand how Peter could become Pius; one sentence, a
catechism; Priscilla, Sister Mary Joseph, etc. But then the
Church is nothing of the sort. Saint Paul tells his friend to
keep the deposit, not to add to it; there is in fact an
appalling curse in the Book of Revelations against those who
do add to God s oracles;f we are bidden to keep the faith
once delivered to the saints; and to refuse even an angel
from heaven if he should preach another gospel than that
which Paul delivered. There is not a shadow of evidence"
and at this John began to turn the leaves of his Bible "not
the shadow of evidence that the Church is like an acorn or
the body of a child."

In ten minutes John is staring at the following texts:

"The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard-seed,
which a man took and sowed in his field: which indeed is the
least of all seeds; but when it is grown it...becometh a tree,
so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches
thereof."

"...the edifying of the body of Christ...till we all come in the
unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God,
unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the
fullness of Christ."

"But this is extraordinary," exclaims John. "Why has no one
ever pointed this out to me before? Why has the Church
Times always said so much about the faith once delivered to
the saints, and so little about these astonishing texts? They
change the whole complexion of affairs.

"Here is Christ Himself saying, as plainly as words can do it,
that the kingdom of heaven will utterly change its
appearance from being like a small, round seed, simple in
shape and colour and texture, to the semblance of a vast,
elaborate, glorious tree, of a thousand surfaces and curves,
of innumerable branches, twigs, leaves, fibres and roots;
from a seed which a bird can eat, to a tree in which a colony
of birds may live.

"Here is Saint Paul, whom I now remember saying again and
again that the Church is the Body of Christ, declaring that
Body in his days to be as the body of a child, containing
indeed the structure of an athlete, his limbs, his possibilities,
but not actually expressing them; and that this Body will be
gradually edified in the unity not diversity of the faith; and
of the knowledge of the Son of God until it is full-grown until
it gradually corresponds in fact in its outward appear ance
and stature with the mind and spirit of Christ, which have
been in it from the beginning!

"What in the world am I to make of this?"

"I see plainly," says John, "that this will take some thinking
over. First of all there is the question as to how I can tell
whether the Body of Christ has grown as was intended; how I
can be certain whether it has not become deformed by
poison or accident. Certainly that seems to me unlikely,
since it is Christ's Body; but it may be possible. I will set that
aside, how ever, for the present, and consider what growth
means and involves before I consider the possibility of
accident."

First, then, he sees that growth and life are practically
identical, or, to be strict, life is the principle of growth, and
growth the evidence of life. A statue may be more perfect
than a body in grace and proportion, yet it does not grow,

and therefore is not alive. A walking, talking doll may
simulate life, but it is not alive because it is incapable of
growth. Therefore, to compare the Church to a body or a
seed, and to deny it the power of growth and expansion, is
to utter a contradiction in terms; or perhaps it is better to
say that to deny growth to the Church is to rob the
metaphors of Christ and His apostles of their essential
meaning.

"Now," cries John, "is it not a fact that the divines of the
Church of England are continually appealing back to the
primitive ages? Human corruptions/ they say, have marred
the perfection of the Apostolic Church; articles have been
added to the faith by Rome; we must continually be
comparing our present system with that of the apostles, and
purging it of error. It was this necessity that caused the
Reformation, and it is this necessity that still keeps us alert
against the insinuation of modern and foreign devotions and
beliefs.

"In other words, for them the Church of Christ is a statue
carved by the hand of God, polished possibly by workmen of
the sub-apostolic age, which it is their duty to keep
undefiled. Lichens encroach upon it by lapse of time,
according to their theory; copes and tiaras, it may be, have
been added by human art and ambition; and these must
continually be removed. But it is a statue, and not a living
body.

"As for the theory that the Church is alive, but reached its
full growth about the end of the first, second, fourth or sixth
century that is simply not worth considering. For these are
purely arbitrary points, selected by various parties according
to their own idea of perfection. There is not one single
objective reason why any one of these periods should be
preferred to any other. It is ridiculous to say that Saint Paul

looked forward to the end of the sixth century as the
culmination of the measure of the stature of the fullness of
Christ. To pretend that he had any such view is indeed to
make null the word of God by human traditions that have
not even common sense to recommend them. Besides, if so,
what in the world has it been doing ever since?

"It is as arbitrary as to say that the perfection of a child's
growth is reached at the age of fourteen. So long as he
continues to grow in strength and stature, so long we must
be content to put aside our own views of what perfection
should be, and trust God's ideal instead.

"But how can we know," he next asks himself," whether it is
not growing wrong? I must put aside this main point for the
present; but this at least I see that, granted that it does grow
according to God's plan, it can never reject what has once
been part of its structure. (In the main I do see that if we
cannot trust God with the general development of the
Church, we cannot trust Him at all. Some say that the
physical resurrection of Christ was an error subsequent to
the purity of the Gospel; and I have really no answer except
that I cannot believe that such an error would have been
permitted, if I take for granted the revelation of God through
Jesus Christ at all.)

"But to return. I understand that development must be along
the original lines of the nature of the organism. If an oak,
after ten years growth, suddenly rejected roots and walked
out of my garden on legs, I should conclude that I had been
mistaken as to its oak-nature. It cannot change the laws of
its existence; it may throw out branches, but not hands."

John then reflects that it is the reproach of the Church of
Rome that she will not change nor eat her words. Like Pilate,
what she has written, she has written. She may expound and

amplify her statements; she may make explicit what was
once only implicit; but the original statement still stands as
a summary of its later amplifications.

But the Church of England and the Non-conformist sects
follow a different principle. That branch of the tree that once
spread its leaves over England had, without the shadow of a
doubt, its roots in Rome.

"I cannot understand," cries John, impatiently, "what
Anglicans mean who declare that the Church of Anselm and
Augustine was not Roman Catholic. Every bishop
consecrated in the fifteenth century swore in the most
solemn manner that he drew his spiritual, ecclesiastical and
temporal prerogatives from the Pope. The Pope was prayed
for in every Mass until his name was deliberately scratched
out by the Reformers; it was to him that the final appeal lay.
If the pre-Reformation Church in England was not Roman
Catholic, the Church of Spain is not Roman Catholic now:
and words cease to bear any meaning!"

He considers then that this collection of Christians, which, in
the phrase of some of them, is a branch of the Catholic
Church, has developed legs and walked away; or, if they
prefer it, has been severed somehow from the roots that still
stand, where they always did, in Rome. It certainly does not
stand where it did; for it is really foolish to assert that the
Church of England stood perfectly still in the sixteenth
century, and that the entire remainder of Western
Christendom with one consent moved from it. Such a
paradox amounts to the statement that the Reformation did
not take place in England at all, but that a violent schism
rent the rest of Christendom, Rome included, from the
Apostolic roots, at precisely the date at which historians
place the hallucination hitherto called the "Reformation!"

"Such a paradox," he reflects, "can only be paralleled by the
comment of the Popish priest who sat in the gallery at a
Church Defence meeting: I understand it at last," he
whispered to a friend; "the Church of England was Protestant
until the Reformation, and has been Catholic ever since!"

But this is not all. Numerous other points, such as Purgatory
with its corollaries of Masses for the dead, the propitiation
offered for the quick and the dead by the priest in the
Sacrifice of the Mass, in vocation of saints,
transubstantiation, and so forth, once were parts of the
doctrine of the Church of England. Then for a long period
these points were not only disbelieved, but loudly assailed
by the spiritual descendants of Cranmer and Ridley. Even
now, in spite of the Oxford Movement, it is doubtful whether
any of the diocesan bishops, or more than one in ten
thousand of the laity, believe them now. In brief, then,
things that had once been part of the tree, and still are part
of what claims to be the only and original tree, were de
finitely rejected in England as accretions and additions. God
then, according to the Anglican theory, has permitted His
oak to throw out leaves of hazel (or, shall we say, deadly
nightshade?); He has allowed the mystical Body of His Son,
fairer than the children of men,* of whose natural Body not
one bone was broken, to become the distorted body of a
cripple and a hunch back; and it is not merely pierced and
torn, it is beaten out of all semblance to a man. And, most
astounding of all, He has reserved the privilege of pruning
His unnatural tree, and making straight the deformed limbs
of Jesus Christ, to a small section of a small body of
Christians to wards the close of the nineteenth century.

Such, briefly stated, is the claim of those who name
themselves Anglo-Catholics: while for the rest of their
communion, the metaphor of the tree with all that it

involves, is rejected root, branch, leaves, fruit and twig, from
beginning to end, from top to bottom.

"Yet," he reflects, "there is another serious accusation
brought against the Roman Church. What of all those foreign
bodies that she has incorporated into her system? What of
incense, once offered to heathen emperors?
Transubstantiation, a fragment of an exploded human
philosophy; canonization, once under the name of
deification used for declaring members of the imperial
family divine; the Religious life, once practised by the
vestals and all the rest? Have we not here an evident proof
that the development theory is impossible and suicidal?
Such expansion is not development of an original nature, it
is the assimilation of new external things." "Exactly," cries
the Catholic voice in his heart, beginning now to wax louder
than ever, "we confess frankly that we assimilate exterior
things: but so do the acorn and the child. Those masses of
matter did not, literally speaking, reside in the acorn, but
they passed through, transfigured from death to life by its
energy, From the soil that lay round about. As the acorn has
its instinct for what it can assimilate, choosing this chemical
and rejecting that pebble; so the divine seed, sown in the
world at Pentecost, has ever since been passing through
itself those things proper for its growth and expansion. Yet
each such substance must, as it were, be cognate to
something within the acorn, un-hostile to what it will meet
with there, for we cannot add to the deposit of faith, we can
only express it more formally. With every assimilated
particle, as it mounts glorified in the air, there must go the
oak-nature with it that has transformed it. Arius complained
that a new phrase was added to the old Creed when Christ
was called of one substance with the Father. You are adding
to the faith," he cried. Last year it was enough that I should
call Jesus divine, now it seems I must call Him Homoousios:
it is I, then, who am the old Catholic, it is you who are

innovators and heretics! It is not so. answered the Church. I
incorporate the Greek word to express myself more fully; as
an acorn incorporates earth to declare the glorious life that
is hid with in itself; as one day I may declare Mary
immaculate, and the Pope infallible. First the seed, then the
fibre, then the sapling, then the tree.

"It is my glory then," cries the Church to the amazed ears of
John; "it is my glory that I make dead things to live. I take
the dead music of the Jews, and it blossoms in flowers of
plainsong; I catch up the dying language of a Latin people,
and I make it live, when to all others it has been long dead;
it thrives in my liturgy, it generates new words in my
theology, it glows on the lips of my preachers, it is the
tongue in which my foreign priests communicate with me
and with one another. At Pentecost the miracle that showed
the wisdom of God was that men of one language spoke
many; in the twentieth century after Pentecost my miracle is
that men of many languages speak one.

"I sweep up the debased architecture of the Roman Empire,
and out of it I build my basilicas. I seize to myself the dying
philosophy of Aristotle, and recreate it alive to make my
meaning plain. I am ready, as I have always been, to take
the ephemeral things of men, their dress, their methods,
their modes of thought, and to use them, if it suits my
purpose, for the manifestation of my divine life.

"The whole world lies about my roots, and I suck out of every
country and age what befits my energy of life.

"For I am more than the oak and the mustard-tree: I am the
very Vine of God, brought out of Egypt long ago. My seed
fell in a ball of fire with the sound of wind; and from that
moment I have lived indeed. I thrust my white shoots in the
darkness of the catacombs, and forced my way through the

cracks of Caesar's falling palaces; my early grapes were
trodden under foot, rent by the wild boar in the
amphitheatre, spoilt by little foxes, crushed in the wine¬
press of rack and prison; I am blown upon by every wind
that blows, by calumny and criticism from the north, by
passion and fury in the south and west. I am pruned year by
year with sharp knives forged in death and hell, yet grasped
by the hand of the Father who is my husbandman. And yet I
live, and shall live, till my Beloved comes down to taste the
fruits of the garden.

"For I am planted by the river of salvation, watered by the
tears and blood of saints, breathed upon by the spirit of God
who alone can make the spices to flow forth. More than that,

I am mystically one with my Beloved already; it is His Heart's
blood that flows in my veins; His strength that sustains me;
for He is the Vine, my boughs are His branches; and I am
nothing save in Him and them. It is for this cause then that I
spring up indomitable; that I stretch my boughs to the river,
and my branches to the sea, that my shadow is in all lands;
that the wild birds lodge in my branches, the dove and the
eagle together; that the fierce beasts couch beside my roots,
the wolf beside the lamb, and the leopard by the kid. It is for
this that I am older than the centuries, younger than
yesterday, eternal, undying and divine."

John shuts his Bible, and falls to prayer.

Chapter 5 - Infallibility

"It is very well," says John, "to compare the Catholic Church
to a tree, and to explain its apparent changes by
development; but the theory has its disadvantages. Chief
among these is the risk of wrong development, or deformity.
How am I to know whether, for example, Transubstantiation
is not a growth upon the Vine, that has no right to be there?
How can I tell that the Petrine claims are not of the same
nature, and that the Pope, as we see him today, is not a kind
of tumour upon the mystical body, that has arrogated to
itself the functions of a head?"

But, as he considers the matter, the probability of deformity
appears to him to at least very unlikely.

As a matter of fact, the Church of Rome is in possession of
the world in a way in which no other institution is in
possession. It numbers at least half the entire Christian
world, and this half is endowed with a unity entirely lacking
in the other half. Non-Catholics are united in one point only,
namely, in their denial of the Papacy; Catholics are united
not only in their view of the Papacy but in all other points of
doctrine as well. This Church also, which John now calls
Catholic, has provided saints in quality and quantity such as
no other institution has ever produced; it is of all ages,
countries and characters; it has a continuity in which its
fiercest enemies can point to no breach; and, lastly, these
two points which he has advanced as being possible
deformities are not merely small external growths which can
be detached from the body without injuring its life they are
of its very essence and vitality. As the Papacy is the heart of
its doctrinal system, so Transubstantiation is the heart of its
devotional life. From both pour out a stream of faith and

prayer that reach the furthest fibres of its being. Cut these
two things out of the Catholic Church, and the whole body
perishes.

If then for the purposes of argument it is granted that these
two points are in stances of wrong development, John will
have to acknowledge that God Almighty, who promised that
His Church should not be prevailed against by the gates of
hell, has allowed one half of those who call themselves
Christians to be fundamentally perverted in their dogmatic
and devotional life, and the other half to be so internally
divided that they neither reckon themselves nor are
reckoned by the world as forming one body at all. According
to this view then the Creator of the world, who preserves
millions of trees in health and perfection, has allowed His
heavenly Vine to be rent by disease and schism; He who
brings man's natural stature to health and maturity has
permitted the mystical Body of His Son to become as that of
a leper and a cripple.

"Yes," answers John to his own thoughts, "I must confess that
it appears to me unlikely that Almighty God would allow His
Vine to be so poisoned by error. I should have expected of
Him that He would have given it some safeguard, some
instinct of choosing good and refusing evil, such as He has
given to man's natural life, and even to senseless
vegetables which He has enabled to draw out of the soil
what is good for their life and to reject what is useless or
poison ous. It is this instinct which I understand by the word
infallibility, that is, an unerring power of distinguishing
between what is true and what is not, between what affects
doctrinal and devotional life for good or for evil, between
what can be healthily incorporated and what must be
resolutely refused. But, on the other hand, God does not
always do what seems likely and probable; His ways are past
finding out. Let me consider therefore what are possible

alternatives to this endowment of infallibility which the
Roman Catholic Church claims for itself."

On reflection he finds that they are three in number.

1. The infallibility of nobody.

2. The infallibility of everybody.

3. The infallibility of some body other than the Roman
Catholic Church.

He considers them one by one.

1. The infallibility of nobody.

The articles of the Church of England state that infallibility is
to be found in no one body, and that the Church of Rome
has erred, as also have the Churches of Antioch and
Jerusalem, even in matters of faith. Neither does the Church
of England apparently believe that infallibility is to be found
in all of these acting together, al though she pays a great
deference, in her words, to what she calls Catholic Doctors.
She believes, then, in a general kind of way, in the guidance
of antiquity,'t but she does not believe in its guaranteed
immunity from error.

John finds himself therefore, so far as he follows her
teaching, in the following situation:

Nineteen hundred years ago there lived, it is reported, one
called Jesus Christ. After His death a number of His admirers
wrote His history, relating many marvels and adding
comments. These histories were sorted out by a body of
persons liable to error (for even general councils, says the
Church of England, are so liable), and summaries called
creeds were drawn up by these same fallible authorities.

Since those days a thousand further questions have been
answered, and a body of doctrine has gradually taken shape
under the hands of men unsafeguarded against mistake. To
this body of doctrine he is bidden to give his adherence.

Yet what reason has he for doing so? Gradual development is
repudiated be cause of the probability of human error
creeping in the Church of Rome is attacked for that very
reason. He is asked therefore to give supernatural faith to
the results arrived at by fallible men concerning the life and
person of One concerning whom there has ever been
enormous controversy, whose history was written by persons
whose only claim to authority is the sanction givent hem by
fallible councils, and who Himself lived in the East, an
uncritical district in an uncritical age.

What kind of security is there that the account of that
Person is to be relied upon, that His words and deeds are
truly reported? Why should not those fallible councils have
fallen into grievous error, including untrustworthy narratives
in their so-called canon of Scripture, and excluding as
heretical true comments on that life and Person? Perhaps
the Gospel according to Saint John has no claim to authority!
Perhaps the Church of England may be utterly wrong in
thinking Jesus Christ divine! Perhaps the whole matter is a
beautiful delusion from beginning to end!

Yet, even assuming that Jesus was God, the state of affairs is
not much better; for, according to this theory of the fallibility
of everybody, we may have wholly misconstrued the
meaning of His words and acts; we are asked to give an
unquestioning faith to things distinctly questionable; and
Jesus Christ who brought us a revelation has provided no
means of preserving it unimpaired.

"I may as well, cries John, "give it all up at once, and confess
that unless there is somewhere on earth an authority that
speaks infallibly, it would have been much better if I had
never been tantalized by a glimpse of a truth which I am
unable to apprehend."

2. The infallibility of everybody.

This, in effect, is the claim of many Protestants. Every man,
they say, who has received the gift of faith, and who
prayerfully cultivates it, is illuminated from on high with a
power of discerning between true and false, and of rightfully
understanding the Holy Scriptures.

"Now if," says John, "I am told that the Pope's infallibility is
impossible to believe, how can I be expected to think the
infallibility of, let us say, two hundred million persons is
easier of belief? Is not this straining at a gnat, and
swallowing a very large herd of gigantic camels? Besides,
these infallible individuals differ diametrically on points of
faith. General Booth is certainly a sincere and prayerful man,
and he tells me that baptism is an unnecessary piece of
ceremonial; while Dr Guinness Rogers urges it as at least
very important. The Wesleyans are infallible when they tell
me that I am free to choose or refuse God; and the Calvinists
are infallible when they tell me that I am nothing of the kind.
And so forth.

"I am therefore in a worse position than ever; for it is even
more bewildering to believe that God demands from me
faith in a large number of not only irreconcilable but flatly
contradictory propositions, than that He has taken no steps
at all to secure the infallible transmission of His revelation in
Jesus Christ."

3. The infallibility of somebody other than the Roman
Catholic Church.

Now the principal exponents in England of this last
alternative are to be found among those whom their
enemies call "Ritualists."

Briefly, as John has learnt in the past, the theory is as
follows:

The infallible Church of God consists of those bodies of
Christians, acting together, who hold the old creeds of
Christendom and have retained at least the three-fold order
of ministers, bishops, priests and deacons. Roughly
speaking, these may be enumerated as the communions of
Rome, Moscow and Canterbury. These three circles, however,
are not absolutely coincident; each has its own peculiarities,
and it is only in that part where all three overlap that
complete security is to be found. For example, all three
communions hold, at any rate in their written formularies,
such doctrines as those of the Real Presence and the
sacrament of Penance (to mention points of controversy).
Other doctrines such as the sacrifice of the Mass, invocation
of saints, and prayers for the dead, while held explicitly by
Rome and Moscow, cannot be demonstrated, say the
Ritualists, as actually and literally incompatible with the
formularies of the Church of England, even though until the
last seventy years very nearly all, and at the present
moment more than half of her children, following at any rate
a possible interpretation of her "Articles," strenuously deny
them.

"But let us waive all these questions," says John, "and take
the Ritualistic theory as proved. In what condition does it
leave us?

"To my first question, How does this infallible authority i.e.,
the agreement between Rome, Moscow and Canterbury utter
her voice? the answer is, For the present she speaks by
silent agreement, in the future it is to be hoped that she will
speak by a general council.

"Again (waiving the matter of the Twenty-first Article, which
expressly states that general councils may err, even in
things pertaining to God), I ask: Is there any kind of
possibility, humanly speaking, that such a general council
will ever be gathered? How is such a council possible when
one of the three partners repudiates the jurisdiction and
position of one of the others, and the jurisdiction, position
and orders of the third; when the second partner repudiates
the first and third altogether; and only a small section of the
third partner believes in the theory at all? Is this any more
than a paper-theory, that may be maintained for purposes of
argument, but which is utterly useless to people like myself,
alive at this moment, who want to know what to believe?

"As for the silent agreement, I asked not about silence, but
speech. I asked how this infallible authority speaks, not what
she may be believed to imply; for implication is an uncertain
ground to go upon. I may take one view of what she implies,
and you may take another. Where then is the voice that will
decide between us? You do not find it in your own bishops,
for you do not obey them, but appeal from them back once
more to this silent agreement, or to the future speech of a
council that you know will never meet. Is not this tangle
insoluble? Are we not at the whirling edge of a vicious
circle?

"Yet again, I will waive all this and take your theory for
granted.

"I understand that you do, as a matter of fact, base your
acceptance of the Real Presence, the sacrament of Penance,
and so on, upon this agreement of what you call the Church
Diffusive; in fact you base your whole faith upon it. I must
ask then a very fundamental question: Does this theory of
silent agreement itself find support from what you call the
Catholic Church? Do Rome, Moscow and Canter bury accept
the positions into which you thrust them? Do they
acknowledge that infallible authority resides in the
overlapping of their respective tenets, and nowhere else?

For it is impossible to base in dividual doctrines upon a
foundation which is itself repudiated by itself."

"I must confess," answers the Ritualist, "that Rome and
Moscow, to say nothing of Canterbury, do refuse the theory.
Rome arrogantly claims to be the whole of the Catholic
Church; Moscow claims to be alone orthodox."

"Then," cries John once more, "I have to accept this theory
upon your authority alone. You base your authority upon this
theory, and this theory upon your authority. Have you ever
heard of the Indian theory of the universe? The world stands
on an elephant, the elephant upon a tortoise; and the
tortoise, apparently, upon the world.

"My dear sir," continues John to his imaginary Ritualist, "you
really must set me alone. I am more bewildered than I can
describe. You forget that I am not a scholar like yourself. To
my poor brain your theory appears like the dream of a
professor who never leaves his college. And yet I am quite
aware that you do magnificent work in practical life; that
you sacrifice yourself nobly for God S poor, that you teach
them uplifting doctrines, and set them an example that we
should all do well to follow. But in your theory you are a
dreamer; it is a city in the clouds that inspires your journey;
it moves before you, changing its shape with every wind

that blows; never descending to dwell among men. For
myself, I cannot walk in its light; I need a Jerusalem which
has God for its architect, and which, though its head reaches
to heaven, yet has its foundations and gates upon earth. For
the twentieth time, I am a simple man; and with all the good
will in the world I cannot honestly believe in a living
authority which has undergone petrifaction, in a vine which
consists of branches severed one from another, in a
speaking voice which is dumb, in a republic which has no
president, in a life which offers no proof of its existence. I
admire your works, I am astonished at your ingenuity; but I
cannot believe in your theories. I shall be obliged if you will
let me alone, and allow me to look at the Penny Catechism
once more."

"The Church has a visible Head on earth the Bishop of Rome,
who is the Vicar of Christ. He is the shepherd and teacher of
all Christians, and he cannot err when, as shepherd and
teacher of all Christians, he defines a doctrine concerning
faith and morals to be held by the whole Church. The Church
has marks by which we know her. She is one because all her
members agree in one faith...and are all united under one
Head. She is distinguished by the eminent holiness of...many
thousands of her children. She subsists in all ages, teaches
all nations. She holds the doctrines and traditions of the
apostles...and derives her Orders and Mission from them.

She cannot err...because Christ promised that the gates of
hell shall never prevail against His Church; that the Holy
Ghost shall teach her all things, and that He Himself will be
with her...even to the consummation of the world."

"Ah!" he cries, "at least I understand this theory. God has not
left us comfort less: He has planted His Vine and safe¬
guarded her against error. He has established an authority
which speaks with His voice.

"And the whole of my observation confirms the theory. It is
written not on paper, but in the lives and hearts of men. I
see a unity here, unlike any other unity in the world; I hear a
voice consistent with itself and louder than all the cries of
conflict, and a message that is the same for simple and wise
alike; I see a Figure moving through the ages,
overshadowing every country, and bearing on herself the
marks of the Lord Jesus; and I hear millions of voices
acclaiming her as divine. Her children are not required to be
infallible; they are not asked to expect personal illumination
from heaven on all points of doctrine; one thing only is given
certitude that she is what she claims to be; one thing only is
asked a simple act of faith in her mission.

"It seems to me when I pass from other theories to this that I
am coming out from candlelight to day, that I am
descending from a trapeze to the solid ground, that I am
passing from a riot of anarchy into the presence of a quiet
king. Scholarship is not asked of me, nor eloquence, nor
ingenuity; no more is required than was required of Mary
and Martha and James and Andrew, and which all can give
that, looking upon this Figure, I should recognize it as from
God, listening to the message I should acclaim it as divine;
and that my highest joy and widest freedom should
henceforth be found in sitting at those feet, resigning my
self-will, and learning what the Lord God will say.

"But whether I can do all that is another question.

"For I have one vast difficulty yet to solve," says John; "and it
is one that, unless answered, will knock the whole affair on
the head. Is it not a fact that this infallible Church has been
obliged more than once to recede from her position, and to
deny what she once defined? If a single instance can be
proved of this, the whole beautiful edifice falls at once.

"What about Galileo?"

It would delay us too long to follow John in his researches;
but, briefly, this is the answer that he receives from a priest
to whom he betakes himself:

"The Church never condemned Galileo. It was only the
Inquisition."

"But is not the Inquisition one channel through which the
Church speaks?"

"Not in that sense," answers the priest. "The Church only
speaks infallibly in one of two ways: either through a
General Council confirmed by the Pope, or through the Pope
speaking by himself. It is all in the penny Catechism."

"But the Pope assented to the condemnation of Galileo!"

"Not as Pope."

"Why, this is bewildering!" criesjohn. "How am I to tell when
the Pope speaks infallibly?"

"From the penny Catechism. Listen, my dear sir.

"When I say that the Pope is infallible, I mean that the Pope
cannot err when, as shepherd and teacher of all Christians,
he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held
by the whole Church. Do you see? Firstly, the Pope may be
heretical in his private opinions or statements, as John XXII
was, if it is true that he really said and meant that the saints
do not see God. But that has nothing whatever to do with
infallibility. He is not defining a doctrine to be held by the
whole Church. Secondly, the Pope may make a mistake even
in a solemn public utterance if it is not on a matter of faith
or morals. For example, Pius X may be wrong when he thinks

it good for the Church that Catholics should vote in
government elections, and tells them to do so. (I do not say
that it may not be better for us to obey even when we think
he is wrong, because, after all, he is our religious superior,
and is likely to know more about the matter than we; but we
do not obey him then as infallible, but only as
authoritative.) 11

"Yes, yes, Father Brown; but how about Galileo? That was on
the faith, because the Pope said it was distinctly heretical!
And, you know, the earth does go round the sun after all!"

"Yes, but he was not speaking as the shepherd and teacher
of all Christians, but only as the chief official of the
Inquisition. The king may give his assent to a resolution of
the Privy Council, but that does not make it law. It is not the
royal assent; he does not speak as king/ but only as the
chief person in the Privy Council."

"Oh!" says John.

"Yes, sir; I know it is surprising. But, after all, we must be
allowed to know what we believe better than our enemies.
Shall I go on?"

"If you please."

"Well, then, General Councils and Popes are only infallible on
matters of faith and morals, and under the conditions I have
described. And the reason is that faith and morals are the
two vital functions of the Church. You told me a few days ago
that unless there was an infallible authority somewhere, you
did not see how it was possible to know what Christianity
really is. I agreed with you.

"But all our affairs are not absolutely vital. Physical science
is not. What is vital is only our religious belief and the

morality of our actions; in other words, our faith and morals.
Therefore the Church only claims infallibility in those things.

"Again, theologians may make mistakes even in those
things, and so may the faithful. But then theologians are not
infallible, nor are the faithful. What we must have, as you
rightly said, is a final, infallible authority which declares to
us as much of the mind of God as is necessary for us to
know.

"Once more Popes and General Councils may state their
definitions obscurely or feebly; we do not claim that God is
the author of their decrees in the same sense that He is the
author of Scripture: we only claim that those definitions are
true, and not untrue; otherwise, as you said, Where are we?"

"Yes, yes," interrupts John, "I see that. But then, if the Pope
always was infallible, how comes it that he was ever
resisted? Why did Meletius and Cyprian resist him? Why are
councils necessary? Why didn't the early Christians simply
appeal to the Pope and have things settled?

"That is an enormous question. Let me answer it by an
allegory.

"You mentioned to me some days ago that you understood
the theory of development. Very well. When a child is young,
his head is his head, and is, in one sense, the ruler of his
body. But the limbs don't quite realize it. He tries to walk,
and falls down, because the limbs are not yet in full
conscious relations with the brain. They are vitally one with
the brain, and are, as a matter of fact, generally controlled
by it; but the full realization of all that that means has not
penetrated to his toes. So he tumbles.

"Gradually, however, the process of centralization goes on;
the limbs learn that only by entire obedience to the head do

they enjoy real security and liberty. That is the process that
is called, in regard to the Catholic Church, the Romanizing of
nations; it means that while the Pope has always been the
head, yet all that that implies is not fully and really
understood by all the members of the Church. (The Gallican
movement was retrograde, not progressive, therefore.) We
may say then that the Vatican decree of 71, defining the
Pope as infallible, was a kind of attaining of the majority; the
Church, in a sort of way, came of age; just as when a boy
becomes a man, it implies that the slightly clumsy,
undeveloped age is passed; he now knows explicitly, what
has always been an implicit fact, that his head is his head,
and must rule every movement of his toes and fingers."

"Stop! stop!"

"One moment. With regard to councils there are more ways
than one in which a child may speak. He may speak by
gestures of his whole body as a sign of attraction or
repulsion; and, when he is a child, he does generally so
speak. It seems to him more emphatic. As he grows up his
gestures become fewer and his words more frequent. When
he is perfectly self-controlled, he may manage to do without
gestures at all.

"Now a council is like a gesture; it is the whole body making
a decisive movement. (Not that the Pope's mouth did not
speak, too, quite often enough, and authoritatively enough,
to shew us what the early Christians thought about him.)

But as the mystical Body of Christ develops, there are still
gestures. The Church at this moment is poised in an
emphatic gesture that we call the Vatican Council never yet
dissolved; but the mouth talks more frequently. Possibly
some day."

"My dear father, you needn't say any more. I see the line."

"It is only an analogy, remember; and there is no perfectly
adequate human analogy to a divine fact."

"But it is enough for the present; I must think it out. Good
night."

Gradually, then, the bewilderment passes, and John beholds
a great sight.

He sees a vast mystical figure, lying athwart the world. The
head rests in Rome, crowned with thorns; the body
wounded, but not broken, stripped, indeed, of its own
gorgeous raiment, but living lies upon the earth. The great
arms and feet stretch across land and sea. Even in far China
tender fingers are groping, gathering souls into them. One
common blood of faith and prayer pulsates from the beating
heart through all nations, uniting them in a supernatural life
such as the world has never seen. Sometimes by a slow
movement the figure shifts itself from some poisonous
vapour, declaring its nature by the action of the whole
frame; sometimes by a word, awful and majestic, issuing
from that thorn-crowned head, clamours and disputes are
silenced. That huge being has taken nineteen centuries to
come of age; and with that climax has followed peace.

The limbs that tossed a thousand years ago in a fever of
unrest lie quiet under the supreme control of the infallible
mind; and the world that has helped to wound them so
grievously stands astonished at the undying vitality, the
incessant energy, the enormous recuperative power more
evident today than ever before.

And still the world that should have exhausted his malice
comes to the assault again and again, carrying calumny as
his sword, Protestantism as his shield, and not ashamed to
use the rack and the gallows when all else fails to wound.

And the huge mystical figure shrinks in pain, for, if one
member suffer, all the members suffer with it, and yet
survives; and the imprisoned head turns weary eyes to
heaven, as if to cry, "How long?" And back again from
heaven comes the answer, as an echo from Galilee of that
cry that brought that life into being:

"Thou art Peter. The gates of hell shall not prevail. I will give
unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven."

Chapter 6 - Intellect, Emotion and
Faith

Another difficulty remains to be cleared away; and it is one
that besets many souls as they approach the threshold of
Catholicism. John states it to himself in this fashion.

"I have certainly arrived at the door of the Church, following
a train of thought that seems to have been naturally
suggested step by step through the peculiarities of my own
circumstances. But how do I know whether I have not been
deceiving myself throughout? There are certainly many
hundreds of difficult questions that I have not dealt with:
Anglican Orders, communion in one kind, indulgences,
historical facts, the writings of the Fathers and other
matters. I have not dealt with them because they do not
seem to me relevant. But how can I possibly tell whether
they are not so? Many people that I know are held back from
Catholicism simply by such considerations as these; and
they tell me that I have no right to take the important step
of submission until I am completely satisfied on all these
points.

"Or look at the question in another way.

"As I read the newspapers day by day, I see that all over the
world souls are pouring into the Roman Catholic Church.
From Russia they come by tens of thousands: I am told that,
such is the movement in business-like America, New York
will be practically a Catholic city in an other fifty years. In
France, while the bourgeois nation as a body is throwing off
the faith, the keenest intellects are making haste to
embrace it. I can scarcely take up an English newspaper
without seeing that the Reverend Mr So-and-So or Mrs

Somebody else has been received into the Church. And
when I consider all this, and when I read the reasons on
account of which my own acquaintances have taken this
step, I perceive that no two of them give quite the same
account of their conversion. One was first drawn by music,
another by ceremonial, another by historical continuity,
another by the example of friends, another by visible unity,
another by the Petrine texts and their apparent fulfillment.

"Very well then. Pure reason has very little to do with it; the
Catholic claims are not as logical as they appear; or at any
rate it is not on account of logic that men make their
submission. There is not one plain, undeniably intellectual
path by which men approach the Catholic Church; for each
gives a different account of his journey thither. And if they
do not walk by pure reason, they can only walk by emotion;
and emotion, as we know, is the most unsatisfactory path to
follow. It has a way of suddenly ceasing and leaving one in
the wilderness.

"When, therefore, I seem to myself to have come by
intellect, I am deceiving myself; it is really emotion that has
drawn me on; and what will happen, if, in five years time my
emotion runs dry, and I find myself bound to an institution
in which I do not believe? I cannot trust myself after all!"

It would occupy us too long to follow John in all his struggles
with this last difficulty. He prays, he thinks, he reads, he
despairs, he hopes; and at last there takes shape in his
imagination a kind of intellectual vision.

He sees a great city, the same as that which his patron saw
long ago in Patmos. It stands on a mountain, a city set on a
hill; of the world, for its foundation rests on apostolic men;
and of heaven, for its pinnacles reach to paradise. There is
no temple in it, for God and the Lamb are in it, and every

inch is sacred ground. It has no lamp or light of candle; for
the Lord God is its light, and makes it to be a city of fire, a
light that cannot be hid; so that even the nations that reject
it walk in the splendour that flows from it.

Its foundations are encrusted with every jewel that God has
made; there is not one virtue or grace that does not find a
place there; and the heavenly glory from within shines
through the purity of the diamond, the ardour of the ruby,
the delicacy of the amethyst, the hope of the emerald.

Yet every gate is one pearl. While there is variety in its
ornaments, there is none in its entrances. Men may come
from afar, drawn by the light of this virtue or that, but they
can only enter through a pearl a pearl of great price for
which the sacrifice of all else is a cheap exchange.

These gates, all alike, stand three on each side, facing the
four quarters of the earth; for the nations of north, south,
east and west, are bringing their glory into it.

The Englishman brings his sturdy justice, the American his
swift prudence, the Frenchman his delicate ardour, the
German his solid learning, the Chinese his incredible
patience, the Indian his philosophic acumen, the Spaniard
his smouldering passion. Each nation has his gift to make,
each individual his contribution; but each passes in turn
through the one and self-same gate to find his offering
accepted and his poverty enriched.

There are ten thousand paths leading to this city; no two
persons come the same way, for no two characters are alike.
One follows the sound of an organ, one the scent of incense,
one walks with the Scriptures in his hand; another is a
historian, another a mystic, another a philanthropist; one is
a sinner and seeks pardon; another is simple and needs

illumination; another is a saint, and desires union with God;
one is led by his mother's hand; another breaks loose from
his friends to follow Christ. So they stream up by tens of
thousands, each following his own path, each impelled by a
power which he does not wholly understand; but, at the end,
all meet at the same gate; each must enter by the pearl
door.

"There is then," cries John, "but one thing demanded of each
as he passes from the world into the city of Gop. I may be
brought by intellect or emotion, by this train of thought or
that, right up to the walls of the city, but I cannot enter
except through one gate. I may be blind, or prejudiced, or
stupid, or clever, or one-sided; I may approach the gate for
the most inadequate and the most unconvincing reasons,
but when I do get there, I have but to ask myself one
question: do I or do I not believe that this pearl gate gives
entrance to the city of God? Have I or have I not conviction
that this is Christ's Catholic Church? I must not dare to turn
back without answering: I must not venture to question the
straightness of the path that has brought me here, or doubt
whether I was justified in following it, or whether I should
not have come more surely by another way. It does not
matter in the least how I got here. The fact remains that here
I am.

"Somehow I have been brought here; there stands a pearly
vision. It may be an illusion of clouds and light; it may even
be a disguised door to hell. But I dare not, for my own soul's
sake, hesitate to answer. If I nave conviction, I must go
forward; if I have not conviction, I must turn back."

Next he wants to consider what is this faith or divine
conviction by which alone he can enter.

Years ago he made acquaintance for the first time with his
friend James. He was at college with him; and afterwards
chance brought them together again in a provincial town.

He observed James in many circumstances; he saw him in
public and in private, when he was with strangers and when
he was off his guard. He quarrelled with him, argued with
him, was reconciled with him; he saw his faults, his
weaknesses, his virtues and his possibilities; and at last he
came to the conclusion that James was, at any rate, a
perfectly honourable man. He did not pretend to infallibility,
but only to certitude; he was perfectly certain that James
was incapable of a dishonourable action.

Two years ago John received disquieting news. A friend
called upon him to warn him against James; and to relate the
fact that he had been undoubtedly guilty of meanness and
fraudulence. The evidence seemed most convincing; it
appeared im possible to explain it away; yet it had not the
smallest effect upon John.

"I tell you," he answered, "James is simply incapable of this. I
cannot disprove your evidence, but I do not believe it for an
instant. I am perfectly certain that he could have done no
such thing as you describe. I tell you I have complete faith in
him."

"Now this," muses John, "is faith. I cannot say exactly how it
came; how much my intellect had to do with it, or my
emotions, or my intentions. It was a kind of gift that I
received through my intercourse with James; it enabled me
to believe in him in spite of all the black evidence against
him. And it has been justified. I know now that although
appearances were against him, he was innocent. It has all
been explained away. That then is one kind of faith.

He passes on then very naturally to consider the kind of
faith that the friends of Jesus Christ had in Him when He was
upon earth.

They were very ignorant people for the most part; they had
had no training in psychology; and yet they were capable of
a virtue that the Pharisees and scribes did not possess. They
must have been in great difficulties sometimes. Their friends
no doubt would come to them and expostulate with them on
their extraordinary folly.

"How can you believe that Jesus of Nazareth is God? It is
simply unheard-of that God should be incarnate. Besides,
have you not watched Jesus grow from infancy to boyhood,
and boyhood to manhood? Have you not seen Him making
tables and chairs in Joseph's shop? Don t you know Mary, His
mother? Didn't He go to school like the other boys, say His
prayers, eat, sleep, play, talk? How can you be so ridiculous
as to say that He is almighty God?"

"And what in the world," asks John, "could the poor men
answer? They couldn't argue about philosophy, and
development, and the Blessed Trinity, and Cur Deus Homo,
and all the rest of it. They couldn't possibly explain in
intelligible terms why they believed Him God. They could
only shrug their shoulders and smile, and try to say that
they knew perfectly well that Jesus Christ was human; but
that somehow they couldn't say why they were under the
firm impression that He was more than human as well that
they were so certain, that they were willing to die for Him; to
follow His lightest gesture; to leave their nets, and their
friends, and their reputation for common-sense, and
everything else that seemed worth having, at a whisper from
Jesus, and to follow Him through the world."

"And, after all," cries John, "this in explicable thing called
Faith has turned the world upside down. Peter and James
and Bartholomew are known and reverenced throughout the
entire inhabited earth, while we don't even know the names
of the clever men who argued with them, and laughed at
them, and despised them. Does not this faith then seem to
have justified its existence? and is it not possible that the
faith that I have received for it is useless to pretend that I
haven't this conviction that the vision of the city is not an
illusion, but that the gate of pearl is a reality, and that the
light that shines out streams from the face of God Wait! How
did I receive it? When? By what particular argument? I don't
know. God help me! I don't know.

"What is this that has happened to me?

"I feel that a window has been thrown up behind me,
sending a ray of light into the garden where I have been
standing so long in the twilight. Six months ago every thing
was dim and undefined. Those dark shapes might have been
bushes or bears or men kindly or malevolent or indifferent.
Now a light has shined. I do not know who has thrown up the
window; but I think that it can be only one Person. Perhaps
He will shut the window again presently; but will that make
any difference? Of course not; I know now perfectly well
where I am and what is round me. I know that I am in a
garden, not a menagerie; I know that that glimmering thing
is a statue; and that streak of paleness is a gravel path, and
that blot of black a cypress. I shall always know that, what
ever happens, unless I willfully shut my eyes and make
myself think something else.

"Well, then, this is what has happened to my soul.

"I have been staring and puzzling and arguing about things,
and straining my eyes, and listening to explanations, and

doing my best to be in the right attitude for seeing what is
true and what is not. I have done my best not to be bitter
and sarcastic; I have tried to see everybody s point of view,
and to make out what they mean and what I mean. I haven't
bothered about things that did not seem to concern me. I
haven't asked about minute details which I can't possibly
know; or even about great and important things that did not
seem to me to matter personally; and now the window has
gone up, and I know.

"When people ask me exactly why I believe, I cannot exactly
tell them. I can not prove to them that the bush is a bush,
and not a bear; they were not here when the window was
opened. I can only say that I am perfectly certain; I can only
say that I did have difficulties, and that I have them no
longer; that some of the difficulties have actually become
helps to my faith, and that others have melted. There are
probably a great many other difficulties too; but, as Cardinal
Newman said, Ten thousand difficulties do not make one
doubt.

"When they tell me that the Catholic Church is a human
institution; that its importance grew from the fact that Rome
was the capital of the old world; that the faith has gradually
developed; that ambition has played a great part, and all
the rest of it; I shall answer that I am quite aware of all these
facts, that I know that the Church is human, but that that
does not prevent her from being also divine. When they
bring forward yet more serious accusations, which I cannot
answer explicitly, I shall fall back on faith, as I did in that
affair of James's, and tell them that I am absolutely certain
that she is incapable of such things; that I know she cannot
tell a lie; and that no amount of evidence could make me
believe it.

"In other words I have received the Gift of Faith; which, as
the penny catechism told me long ago, though I did not
understand it then, "enables me to believe without doubting
whatever God has revealed.

"And the best thing I can do at this moment is to put on my
hat and go round to the presbytery."

Chapter 7 - The Exchange

"Father," says John, after a few minutes explanation, "will
you kindly preach me a short discourse on what I may
expect to find within the Catholic Church? I am quite
determined to become a Catholic; but I should like to have a
hint of what that means."

The priest looked at him a moment with out speaking. Then
he leaned back and began.

"I am very glad, sir, that you have been courageous enough
to come. I have known many Protestants who came up to the
very door, and then turned back again. They did not ask
themselves whether they did or did not believe in the
Catholic Church; they only wondered whether they were
justified in believing it. They are exactly like the man who
said to Jesus Christ! that he must first go and bury his
father; and, for all we know, he never saw our Blessed Lord
again. No doubt after a few months the impression faded; he
congratulated himself on having been so sensible and
prudent; and his friends congratulated him too. But what a
tragedy!

"Well, you want to know what we have to offer.

"Three hundred years ago we could have offered you great
things: the hatred of all who heard your name; the contempt
of those who were loudest in their love for England. We
could have offered you the Tower as your prison, chains,
stinking dungeons, the rack, the whip, the gallows, the
hangman's cauldron. Now we have no more than the chips
of Christ's cross to tempt you with; a little sneering and
lifting of eyebrows; a little good-humoured laughter; a few
remarks about intellectual servitude; a little smiling pity

over your medievalism, your materialism, your lack of the
sturdy British spirit, your superstition and your fear of the
priest.

"I do not know your circumstances, sir; it may possibly be
that you will have greater tokens of your Saviour's love: He
may be intending to raise foes for you out of your own
household, to deprive you of your means of livelihood that
you may learn to trust Him more entirely. He may be
preparing the loss of all your friends and the contemptuous
hatred of those who are dearest to you, that you may learn
more perfectly the sweetness of His divine friendship. But,
however that may be, you will not despise even those chips
and pebbles from Calvary. He sends them you that you may
remember that where the cross is, Christ is.

"In others affairs we have greater offers to make.

"In return for the sincere sympathy and advice of your
cultivated clergy, which of course you will lose, we offer you
the power of the keys so far as you need them for your sins.
We cannot give you many university men as your spiritual
guides, but I do not know that you will feel the loss of them
very much. We offer instead priests of God. In return for the
words said to you in the vestry, as you knelt beside your
clergyman and told him your sins and he did his utmost to
make the forgiveness of God a reality to your soul we offer
you the authoritative Absolve te a peccatis tuts in nomine
Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti spoken with the authority of
him whom Christ commissioned to open or close the gates of
heaven. There is not the shadow of a question of a doubt as
to this. You will find us far more abrupt and businesslike in
these matters; we shall talk much less than your former
ministers; we have no zeal to justify our claim, no need to
stir the emotions; for, with us, both priest and penitent are
utterly satisfied as to the situation. We offer you certitude in

place of doubt and trembling hope. Remember, you have left
glamour behind you.

"Then, for controversy we offer you peace. You will not find
me opposing my bishop on a matter of doctrine or
ceremonial; nor will you find our religious newspapers
approving this or that prelate for his sound Catholic views.

All this is taken for granted with us; indeed it seems to me
rather strange that it should be necessary even to say so.

You will not be required to make speeches about the
advantages of confession, nor to listen to them, except
perhaps occasionally from the pulpit. You will not be greeted
as a champion of the Church when you profess yourself in
favour of "non-communicating attendance." In fact, as one
of our bishops once said to a complacent convert, you will
have no position at all in the Catholic Church, except that of
sitting below the pulpit and kneeling at the altar-rail.

"Please do not think I am sneering. I fully realize the good
faith of your old friends. I know perfectly well that they
believe that it is their duty to maintain and propagate
Catholic doctrines; and I thank God that they do so so
sincerely and courageously. Of course I should like to see
them all Catholics; but, meantime, I am extremely glad that
they are disseminating the Christian faith so far as they
have received it. I admire their devotion, their single-
heartedness, their courage, more than I can say. They are
fighting a losing battle against fearful odds, and one cannot
but respect them for it. But it is necessary for you to
understand that we are in quite a different position. It may
be that you will think we are lacking in zeal; but you must
remember that the occasional appearance of that rises not
from our want of faith but from our supreme possession of it.
We are so absolutely secure and confident that at times
perhaps we do become a little unwary. But we have our
prophets, as well as our geese, to give the alarm when the

outworks are in danger. You will be a learner now, sir, instead
of possibly a teacher; and in reward for that slight
humiliation you will have peace instead of strife. You are a
child at school again, not a scholar."

John nodded emphatically.

"That is precisely what I want to be, father."

The priest smiled pleasantly.

"That is excellent," he said. "Well, to continue....

"For your spiritual efforts we offer you sacramental
communions.

"For the bread and wine received with faith and
thanksgiving in remembrance that Christ died for you, we
offer you the very Body that shivered in the manger and
agonized on the cross; the very Blood that poured on
Calvary for your redemption, adored by angels and desired
by men.

"For your empty altars no doubt dear to you and
consecrated by holy associations and times of refreshment
and visions of God we offer you the very shechinah of glory,
brooding in the tabernacle that stands on every Catholic
altar. You need no more question or doubt about this, or ask
yourself whether the practice of reservation is in accordance
with primitive practice. There it is! The Church sanctions it.
Behold the tabernacle of God with men.

"And lastly, in return for the friends whom you may lose,
who may become estranged from you, calling you renegade
and traitor, we offer you the communion of a Church that
knows no distinction of family or race or colour. You will have
the Indians and thejapanese and the Italians and the French

as your blood relations - blood-relations, for you are all born
again from the same mother of salvation. If God takes away
from you a few whom you have learned to love, He gives you
in return many millions of other souls as your brethren in
Jesus Christ. You will be one with the saints of all ages and
lands. You need not trouble any more to decide between
Aidan and Augustine; that matter has already been decided;
and you may pray to whichever you please, or to both
together without the fear of being historically disloyal to
either.

"And we offer you more than this.

"In return for the earthly friends whom you lose, we offer you
the restored friend ship of all whom you have lost. You are
not leaving the faith of your fathers; you are coming back to
it. Your parents, who died, you tell me, twenty years ago,
have been Catholics I firmly believe after all that you have
said about them ever since you closed their eyes. They have
been waiting for this, praying for this, desiring it with all
their hearts. And now, please God, they are thanking Him for
His grace and their son's response to it.

"We offer you then, in a word, the saints in glory for your
helpers and defenders; the holy souls as your brethren and
intercessors, Mary as your Mother, Jesus Christ as your lover
and God as your all in all.

"I know, sir, that you are sacrificing more than you will
confess. I understand, perhaps even better than you do
yourself, the agony of each fibre as it is torn up from the
ground where it has grown so long, and you will find perhaps
that the pain will be greater than at present you can
conceive possible. I do not under-rate all this; in fact, I tell
you plainly, that it will be worse than you think.

"But if I do not underestimate this, neither do I
underestimate the reward that you will receive. I tell you
that the Lord is more gracious than it is possible to imagine;
that His Heart is too sweet for human language to describe;
and that the Everlasting Arms have more power than you
dream of. Therefore, while I think that you do not yet
understand the sufferings you will undergo, as nerve by
nerve is wrenched, and illusion after illusion dispelled, I am
perfectly certain that you have not yet the slightest idea of
all that God is preparing as your temporal and eternal
recompense. I can only tell you that He will reward you as He
alone can do."

As John left the presbytery that night, a scrap or two of
Scripture ran in his head like a song.

"Ye are come unto Mount Zion, and to the city of the living
God, the heavenly Jerusalem; and to the company of many
thousands of angels; and to the Church of the first-born who
are written in heaven; and to God the Judge of all; and to the
spirits of the just made perfect; and to Jesus."

"Behold the tabernacle of God with men."

And as his heart swells in praise and thankfulness to God
who has shown such loving-kindness, it becomes articulate
at last, as he kneels, thrilling with a devotion that he cannot
understand, and seeing a mystery that he cannot interpret.

"I am sure!" he cries within himself, "I am sure that neither
death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor
things present, northings to come, nor might, nor height,
nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate
me from the love of God."

Conclusion

Many people when they read the the biographies of great
men, cannot appreciate the high thoughts and emotions
contained in them, until they have first grasped a mental
picture of the man in his daily life. They wish to know at
what time he rose in the morning, how he occupied his time,
what he wore, ate and did. Not until then can they enter into
his point of view.

Now many souls believe in Catholicism in an inchoate way:
they apprehend its holiness, its beliefs, its aspirations; but
they are held back from appreciating these things through
their ignorance of its more concrete details. They might
even make their submission to the Church, were it not that
they were either ignorant, or, at any rate, mistaken, as to the
actual process involved in that act. There is in them a kind
of nebulous faith, but it is not yet solidified into a star.

In this last lecture, then, I propose to pass from generalities
to particulars, from faith in general to acts of faith, from
dogma to its shrine in the penny catechism, from John at the
gate of pearl to John beside the presbytery fire.

For six weeks he attends the instructions of Father Brown;
the two sit together in formally, and go through the main
points which a man should know before he binds himself
and is bound irrevocably to the Catholic Creed. They discuss
the great cardinal points of the Faith the Being of God, the
Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, the Church, the Sacraments;
and they pass on to indulgences, relics, invocation of saints,
purgatory and a rule of life.

They do not argue much; for, after all, John is convinced of
the divine authority of the Catholic Church; and he is here

not to criticize but to learn.

It is, of course, impossible to deal with the points
individually; I propose rather to speak of the general
impression on his mind.

Hitherto he has believed, because he understood; now he
understands, because he believes; and there is a vast
difference between the two positions.

As a High Churchman he has advanced step by step along
the road of dogma; he came to believe in the Real Presence,
be cause it was shown to him that the sacramental method
was God's method in nature as well as in grace, that it was
but natural that man's double nature should be sanctified by
a gift that has an outward sensible form as well as an inner
substance; he has come to believe in absolution when it was
pointed out to him that what God does through another He
does Himself, and that the divine pardon may well be
conveyed through a human agency.

But now he believes these things, not because he
understands, not even because he understands them better
than ever before; but because an authority which he
recognizes as divine proposes them unmistakably to his
acceptance.

It was so, he perceives, long ago with the disciples of Jesus
Christ. Our Lord had been saying words which must have
appeared little less than shocking to many who heard them.
He had declared that unless a man ate His Body and drank
His Blood, he could have no life in him; and the amazing
novelty of the words had caused consternation.

The enthusiastic crowds had dispersed, murmuring, "How
can this Man give us His flesh to eat? This saying is hard,
and who can hear it?"

And our Lord looks round wistfully on the puzzled faces of
His friends who believe Him better than they can
understand Him.

"Will you also go away?"

There rings out the Catholic answer, piteous and faithful:

"Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal
life. We have believed and have known and we must still act
upon that conviction we have believed and have known that
Thou art the Christ, the Son of God."

Sojohn cries now in his heart:

"To whom else shall I go? I have tried all other teachers and
they have failed me. Here is one whom I perceive to be
divine. I may not understand yet one half of what I believe;
there are matters to which I give my assent, to which I
cannot give my intellect but to whom else shall I go? Never
man spake like this man. Never was there a human
institution that proclaims so convincingly, so searchingly, so
competently the hidden mysteries of God. I have believed
and known; and I am coming to believe and know more
overwhelmingly every day that this is the body and bride of
Christ. This man who sits here and talks may not be very
clever, or very eloquent, or very learned; but he speaks not
of himself but of another; and his words ring as true in my
heart. I believe wholly and unreservedly."

There follows an extraordinary peace.

Years ago John had learned his alphabet from his mother;
then he went to school and afterwards to the University; but
he never remembered later lessons as he remembered
those. At home, A came first, then B; then C; and later on it
appeared as if some thought that B should begin the

alphabet, that T should follow, and that the list should end
with Q. At school he found himself passed on from teacher to
teacher, no two of whom taught by the same method; at the
University it appeared that not only in methods but in
substance the doctors differed. He had compared more than
once these learned discussions with the simplicity, the
inevitableness, the dogmatism of his mother's teaching; and
there had been the sense too that his mother cared in a way
that no other teacher ever cared; she wished him to learn his
alphabet, but to learn it without tears or rebellion; she
wished him to be sufficiently educated, but even more to be
a good child, and to become a good boy and a good man.

So now, as he sits in the presbytery, under the eye of his
Holy Mother, the same air of tenderness and love and sweet
dogmatism seems to fill the room. He may ask questions, of
course, but it must be with the desire of learning, not of
answering again. What he hears is to be final; there is no
appeal; A must be said before B; and F must follow E; and
yet that is not all. His Mother wishes him to be a good son,
and become a good Catholic rather than a theologian. He
begins to understand as never before that the childlike mind
is the best, and that without it he cannot enter upon his
inheritance of heaven. He catches a breath of sweetness
from the words said so long ago; he begins to finger lovingly
Christ's yoke, and to learn of Him who was meek and humble
of Heart, and to find rest to his soul; for Christ's yoke is
sweet and His burden light.

Among the questions that he puts there is the following:

"What am I to think about Anglican sacraments? My friends
tell me that I must be re-baptized, and that this is
contradictory to the Church's teaching on the subject. She
teaches, I understand, that even lay-baptism is valid. Now I

was baptized by a clergyman when I was a child. Why then
need I be re-baptized? Then there are the other sacraments."

"One moment," answers the priest, "let us settle baptism
first. Can you tell me for certain that the clergyman baptized
you properly? Of course if you can prove this, there will be
no question of my baptizing you."

"What do you mean by properly, father?"

"Well, our Lord said Water and the Spirit. Some people are
very careless about water. I remember once seeing a
clergyman sprinkle water towards a boy and a girl who stood
about two yards from the font, and I doubt very much
whether it even touched them. You see some Church of
England clergy honestly do not believe that it matters very
much; so of course they are not very particular about it. Why
should they be? But in that case the candidates did not
have done to them what our Lord meant when He said
Water. Of course some people differ from us; but the Catholic
Church does not pretend to be more spiritual than Jesus
Christ; she says water because He did."

"I see. Well, I can't prove that I was properly baptized. I have
no witnesses, and the clergyman is dead."

"Then you must be baptized conditionally. I shall pour water
on your head and say that if you are not baptized, I baptize
you. If, after all, you were baptized, no harm is done; and if
you were not, well, it will be true baptism. There is no
question of repeating baptism. Do you understand?"

"Yes; I understand, father. And about the other sacraments?"

"Yes; put it as strongly as you like."

"Well, answers John, "my friends are at me for what they say
is my repudiation of grace. It is perfectly true that I was very
often very happy after receiving Anglican sacraments. When
I made my confessions, I never doubted for a moment that 1
was properly absolved. When I came down again from
communion, I was often full of holy thoughts and desires,
and was quite sure that I had received Jesus Christ. Now, is it
really true, father, that I have got to say that all that was
nothing at all, or even that it was Satan who made me feel
happy in order to keep me back from thinking of the
Catholic Church?"

"No, no; nothing so ridiculous. Your friends do not know what
they are talking about. The Church does not tell you to
believe anything so absurd. When you went to confession
and communion in the Church of England, you did your best,
I am sure, to be in proper dispositions, to love God, and to be
really sorry for your sins. Well, then, God rewarded you by
giving you those holy feelings and thoughts. Every time you
were truly contrite He forgave you your sins; and every time
you went to communion, be cause you wished to please
Him, He gave you grace. But it was not sacramental grace;
the clergyman had no authority to bind or to loose, and no
power to consecrate the Body of the Lord; but all that grace
was real grace to help you. All that you have to repudiate is
your ideas about it, your intellectual conception of it; not
the grace itself. Is that any clearer?"

"It is perfectly clear; thank you very much."

"Tell your friends that, the next time they talk. Tell them that
they have simply no idea of what the Church does teach.
Why Saint Gertrude once said that a good spiri tual
communion often gave more grace than a lukewarm
sacramental communion, and the Church expressly teaches
that an act of perfect contrition wins forgiveness in the

absence of a priest. Of course you have got to confess all
your sins again to carry out your acts of contrition (an act of
contrition includes the intention to fulfill all God's
requirements); and now you are able to do that, you must, of
course, do it. But your feelings of forgiveness after Anglican
absolutions were perfectly true and genuine. God forgave
you, because you loved Him and wished to conform to the
Sacrament of Penance, not be cause you actually received
it."

"I understand. Please tell me about my confession."

"There is very little to tell beyond what I have told you
already. You must not be scrupulous and torment yourself. It
is probably impossible for you to remember every mortal sin
you have ever committed; and God only asks you to do your
best. You must, as you know, tell anything that you can
remember and then leave it. I advise you not to bring a
paper with you; it is apt to breed scruples, and you can be as
informal as you like. It is very simple."

John sighed.

"Yes," he said, "and very hard."

"No, not so hard, if you look beyond it. I remember as a boy
coming home from school I had a very long drive from the
station in a dog-cart. I lived in the north, and the drive was
terribly cold sometimes in winter. But, you know, I did not
mind it much. Of course, it was not pleasant; but then there
was the home-coming to look forward to the lights, the
warmth, my mother in fact, home. Do you understand?"

"I understand, father."

"Well, then, shall we say next Thursday at 4 o clock?"

As John kneels in the Church on the following Thursday a
few minutes before four o clock he is conscious of great
excitement and great fear.

It is a dingy little place, wholly unimpressive in itself; yet it
has the strange silence that he has so often noticed there
before. From outside come the murmur of wheels, the patter
of feet on the pavement, the rumour of a world that goes
about its business; and he has the sensation of a swimmer
who stands poised on the edge of a deep-flowing stream. He
wishes he had not come, or that he had come sooner, or that
the day had been fixed a week hence; and although he is
physically free to get up and go out, it is a morally
impossible act. The shock of the plunge is imminent; he will
be presently among those mysteries half seen through the
wrinkled swirl of the surface; and he knows they will look
very differently then, but he is not certain whether they will
be more or less inviting when he is amid the medium that
half discloses, half conceals, their nature.

But the silence becomes vivid and alive as he stares
disconsolately at the steady little red spark overhead above
the tabernacle, and finds at last a supersensual voice.

"It is I: Be not afraid."

A figure looks out presently from the sacristy-door, beckons
him up to the side-chapel, and John finds himself with the
Ritual in his hands reading out, a little tremulously, the
profession of faith. It has all come about with the swiftness
of thought, and his voice steadies and his heart burns as the
sounding proclamation streams from his lips.

Here are all the matters for which he has contended and
argued so long, which have been denied and explained
away and questioned by those who were of one communion

with himself here they all are now, declared without fear or
compromise. First comes the Nicene Creed, and then an
elucidation of its challenged clauses, made necessary by
those who accept the old words but deny the old sense of
them.

He professes seven sacraments now, not two (generally
necessary) and five doubtful ordinances; and he admits and
receives the ceremonies customary in their administration.
He professes likewise his faith in the sacrifice of the Mass,
true, proper and propitiatory for the living and the dead; he
declares that in the sacrament of the Eucharist there is truly,
really and substantially the Body and Blood, together with
the Soul and Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ: and he names
the conversion of the substance of the elements
transubstantiation. He states the doctrines of Purgatory,
prayers for the dead and indulgences; and declares that the
saints reigning with Christ are to be honoured and
invocated.

So it goes on, clause after clause, till at last he promises his
own true and personal obedience to the Bishop of Rome,
successor to Saint Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and Vicar of
Jesus Christ. There it is, all printed in the book, declared by
his lips, and witnessed by a Catholic priest.

He finds himself immediately afterwards in the confessional,
and the sharpest point of his trial is before him.

Yet as he kneels there and asks a blessing, the sting seems
already half drawn.

First, it is all so impersonal. There is a grill before his face
through which he can see only the faint profile of the priest
and the white of his cotta and the purple stripe of his stole;
the human element is almost absent, and what there is of it

is reassuring. He remembers the tremendous secret of the
ordinance that not one of the ten thousand enemies of the
Church has ever yet proved a single example of its violation;
he remembers how discretion and tenderness those two
most comfortable virtues have been drummed and drilled
into every priest, until training has merged into character.
Above all, between himself and the other, hangs a crucified
Figure with arms outstretched in embrace, not lifted in
rebuke or condemnation; every word that he himself utters
passes through the fragrant air of Calvary, every word that
he will hear presently must come through the same medium.
That priest within is bound to think and speak as Jesus
Christ Himself would think and speak; he is there, not to
condemn or rebuke, but to welcome, forgive and reconcile.
The dying brigand, the repentant adulteress, the cowardly
friend Dismas, Magdalene and Peter representatives
together of a whole world of sin, each found gentleness not
wrath, welcome not dis-franchisement. And so the tale flows
out easily and sweetly till all is done, and the bar is passed,
and all that remains is to moor the vessel in the haven
where it would be.

After a word or two of encouragement and blessing, he
follows the priest into the sacristy; and three minutes later
he is back again, trembling a little, kneeling once more at
the grill to hear the words that are to reward his efforts and
give him peace.

Ah, this is the supreme moment; it is worth all the agony a
hundred times repeated to receive this first Catholic
absolution! To his eyes it appears as if the golden keys,
given by Christ to Peter so long ago, are actually present; as
if the gate of pearl visibly rolls back in response to his
knock.

He is relieved first of all of excommunication and interdict
unwittingly incurred; the burden of three hundred years of
heresy is lifted from his shoulders this is indeed a going
behind the Reformation to the days when no religion other
than this was dreamed of in England; when Englishmen who
loved Christ honoured His Vicar; when the Church which
they served was Catholic in fact as well as in name; before
Henry, mad with lust and ambition, rent the seamless tunic
of Christ, hacked at the branches of the heavenly vine, and
ravened in the flock purchased with the Blood of the Son of
UOD. . . Then, as in a dream, he sees the hand lifted and
moved in the sign of the cross, and hears the voice raised a
little to press home the personal pardon.

"Absolve te a peccatis tuis: in nomine Patris et Filii et
Spiritus Sancti. Amen."

He is back again in his seat now, his hands clasped, and a
great contentment in his heart. How often has he knelt here
before, an outcast in spite of his corporal presence, trying to
imitate out of reverence and good manners the gestures and
attitudes of the true citizens of God, yet fearing all the while
that he was not one of them I Hitherto, the confessional he
has so often looked at with dread and envy, has been a
sealed chamber to him, into which none but the children of
the kingdom might enter; now he has entered himself,
received the mystery, and come back again. That little white
curtain above the altar which he has seen drawn a hundred
times has never yet been drawn for him; tomorrow he will
receive the heavenly food that tabernacles there among
man. From the mean little pulpit over him he has so often
heard exposition and exhortation, but it was to judge or
approve or demur as his private judgement preferred; next
Sunday he will sit here to listen and be taught.

He is a true Catholic at last; others will give him the name
that he has so often claimed in vain. He is a living stone at
last, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Christ Himself being the head corner-stone, in the vast
edifice of glory where God has set His seat; he is a living
tendril of the vine enkindled by God S Blood, watered by the
tears of saints, brought put of Egypt long ago a tendril that
will in time bring forth new and supernatural fruits of faith,
penance and holiness; he is a child come home at last a
child who has learned his A B C and passed his examination
and pleased his mother; a child, bone of her bone, and flesh
of her flesh, mystically born, not adopted; a child at home
with his brethren the saints at home in that place in which
alone men's hearts can rest, the Sacred Heart of Jesus
pierced for him.

What then does anything else matter? Sorrow can be no
more than a prick, death no more than a passing swoon; for
to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

Appendix I - Saint Peter in Scripture

As regards the Petrine texts appended below, John notices
the following points, to which his attention is drawn in a
small controversial work which he meets with in the course
of his studies:

1. Their full recognition has been of comparatively late date.
By divine guidance Saint Peter himself sought the city and
established his See just where he would gain all the aid that
natural and human surroundings could give him for the swift
and sure development of the final supremacy of his Chair.
This supremacy was no more the result of mere worldly
circumstances than the healthy growth of a tree is the result
of the mere soil in which its seed once found a congenial
home. If the authority on the one hand, and the seed on the
other, had not existed, neither the Chair of Peter nor the tree
would have emerged.

It was not, then, until the head had been fully established as
supreme over the body that men had eyes to see how it had
been so ordained and indicated from the begin ning. After it
had come to pass it was seen to have been inevitable. All
this is paralleled, of course, by the ordinary course of affairs.
Laws of nature, as well as laws of grace, act quite apart from
man's perception or appreciation of them; and it is not until
the law is recognized that its significance and inevitability,
its illustrations and effects, are intelligently recognized
either.

2. The weight of the following list of passages rests in its
cumulative force. The direction of one or two or even three
straws falling in a certain direction may be the result of a
chance draught; thirty straws all falling in one direction
practically indicate a steady wind.

1. Saint Peter's name occurs first in all lists of apostles.

2. He alone receives a new name, solemnly conferred.

3. The name he receives is peculiarly inapplicable to his
personal character and history; presumably, therefore, it is
applied to his official position, and, moreover, it embodies a
metaphor which is specially applied by him to Christ in an
analogous sense.

4. He is the first to confess Christ's divinity, and receives
special promises, namely, (a) "On this rock I will build My
Church"; (b) "The keys of the kingdom of heaven"; (c) he
alone is told that he has received divine knowledge by a
special revelation.

5. He is treated by the world as Christ's representative; and
he is so accepted by Christ, who by an unique miracle
specially associates together Himself and Peter.

6. From his boat Christ teaches; and the miraculous draught
and its interpretation follow that incident.

7. He is indicated as being the object of Christ's special
prayer, distinct from the others ("Satan hath desired to have
you...I have prayed for thee...") and as the support of the
others.

8. He was the first of the apostles to set out for and, in spite
of his age, to enter the empty tomb; and he is distinguished
by the angel as the leader and representative of the rest.

9. He leads the apostles in fishing a significant metaphor.

10. He alone casts himself into the sea to come to Jesus.

11. He alone receives a special threefold commission as
vicar of the Good Shepherd; and he is addressed by Christ
as if in some special sense he was was to abide till Christ's
second coming.

12. He takes the lead in filling up the vacant apostolate.

13. He first preaches at Pentecost and summons men to
salvation; and is accepted by the world as the leader and
interpreter of the rest.

14. He works the first Church miracle, even though
associated with John (as if to show his official relation as
distinguished from John's personal relation to Christ); and
comments on it to the crowd.

15. He is the defender of the Church before the rulers.

16. He utters the first anathema, and it is ratified markedly
by God.

17. His shadow, alone among all, works miracles.

18. He is the first to raise the dead.

19. He is indicated by God as the proper person to apply to
for instruction and baptism; and is the first to receive the
Gentiles.

20. He receives an unique threefold revelation.

21. He instructs the other apostles on the catholicity of the
Church.

22. He is the object of the first divine interposition on behalf
of an individual; and is rescued from death when another
apostle is killed.

23. He opens the first Council, and lays down principles
afterwards accepted by it.

24. Saint Paul mentions the appearance to Cephas as first in
importance.

25. Saint Paul goes to visit him, specially, at Jerusalem,
considering him of more importance than James the local
bishop.

26. Saint Paul twice speaks of resisting him, as if it were a
very serious step.

27. He is spoken of as if in some sense distinct from the rest,
many times; and he is often spokesman for the rest.

28. He is spoken of as the first of the inner three several
times.

29. He himself refers twice to the "shepherding" of Christ; as
if this function of his Master's were much in his mind.

Appendix II - Primitive Papalists

Here also are appended a few patristic and conciliar
quotations, which John finds in the same little controversial
work as the Scripture texts on Saint Peter. He finds it difficult
to resist the conclusion that his dawning belief in the
validity of the Petrine claims was the belief held also in the
early ages of the Church. He notices that the authenticity of
the quotations in question rests upon the word of Dom John
Chapman, O.S.B.

1. Saint Clement of Rome, A.D. 96:

"If any should disobey the thing's spoken by Him through
us, let them know that they will involve themselves in no
light transgression and danger."

(Bishop Lightfoot describes this letter of Saint Clement to
the Corinthians as "the first step towards papal aggression.")

2. Saint Irenceus, A.D. 185, writes of Rome:

By "pointing out...that faith announced to all men (Romans
1:8), which through the succession of her bishops has come
down to us, we confound all those who in any way, whether
through caprice, or vain glory, or blindness, or perverse
opinion, gather otherwise than it behoveth. For with this
Church, on account of her more powerful headship, it is
necessary that every Church, that is, the faithful everywhere
dispersed, should agree (or come together); in which
Church has always been preserved that tradition which is
from the apostles."

3. Saint Cyprian writes, A.D. 251, of certain heretics:

"After all this, and having had a false bishop set up for them
by heretics, they dare to set sail, and to carry letters from
schismatic and profane persons to the Chair of Peter and the
primatial Church, whence sacerdotal unity had its rise; nor
do they consider that those are the Romans whose faith was
celebrated by the praise of the apostle, to whom unfaith
cannot have access."

4. The Council of Aries, A.D. 314, writes to Pope Silvester:

"Since you have been unable to leave those parts, where the
apostles also sit daily, and their blood testifies without
intermission the glory of God..."

5. 5aint Athanasius, A.D. 339, appeals to Rome and goes
there; and Socrates, A.D. 439, thus writes of it:

"Eusebius, having accomplished what he desired, sent an
embassy to Julius, Bishop of Rome, calling upon him to be
the judge of the charges against Athanasius, and to summon
the case to himself."

Sozomen, A.D. 450, writes thus:

"Eusebius wrote to Julius that he should be judge of what
had been decreed at Tyre."

Theodoret, A.D. 450, thus describes it: He [Pope Julius]
following the law of the Church, both ordered them to repair
to Rome, and also summoned the divine Athanasius to
judgement.

6. The Council of Sardica, A.D. 346, writes:

"For this will seem to be best, and by far the most proper
course, if the bishops of the Lord, from every province, shall
refer to the head, that is, the See of Peter."

7. Saint Gregory of Nazianzum, A.D. 307:

"The faith [of Rome] was of old, and still is now, right,
binding the whole West by the saving word: as is just in her
who presides over all, reverencing the whole harmony of
God."

8. Saint Jerome, c. A.D. 376, writes to Pope Damasus:

"I am linked in communion with thy Blessedness, that is,
with the Chair of Peter. On that rock I know that the Church
is built. Whoso shall eat the Lamb outside this house is
profane. . . Whoso gathereth not with thee scattereth: that
is, he who is not of Christ is of Antichrist."

And in another place, c. A.D. 377:

"Meanwhile I cease not to cry out: If anyone is joined to the
See of Peter, he is mine...l conjure your Blessedness...that
you would signify to me by your letters with which bishop in
Syria it is my duty to communicate."

9. The Council of Aquileia writes:

"We...beseech your clemency not to allow the Roman
Church, the head of the whole Roman world, and that most
holy faith of the apostles, to be troubled; for from thence the
rights of venerable communion flow forth to all."

10. The Council of Rome under Damasus A.D. 382, writes:

"Although all the Catholic Churches in the world are one
bridal chamber of Christ, yet the holy Roman Catholic
Apostolic Church has been preferred to the other Churches
by no synodical constitutions, but has obtained the primacy
by the voice of our Lord and Saviour in the Gospel, saying,
"Thou art Peter and upon this rock....loosed in heaven."

11. Saint Optatus, A.D. 385:

"That in that one Chair [established by Peter] unity might be
preserved by all....and that he might at once be condemned
as a schismatic and sinner, who against that pre-eminent
Chair should place another. Therefore in that one Chair,
which is the first of the prerogatives, Peter sat first, to whom
succeeded Linus; to Linus, Clement....Siricius with whom the
whole world is in accordance with us in the one bond of
communion, by the intercourse of letters of peace."

12. Pope Siricius, A.D. 385:

"....You referred to the Roman Church as to the head of your
body;....in me that burden is borne by the blessed Apostle
Peter, who, we trust, in all things protects and has regard to
us who are the heirs of his government."

13. Saint Augustine, A.D. 391:

"I am held by the succession of bishops from the very Chair
of Peter the Apostle, to whom the Lord commended His
sheep to be fed, up to the present episcopate; lastly, I am
held by the very name of Catholic, which, not without cause
amid so many heresies, this Church alone has retained, in
such sort that whereas all heretics wish to be called
Catholics, nevertheless to any stranger who asked, Where is
the meeting of the Catholic Church held? no heretic would
dare to point out his own basilica or house.

Again he writes, after quoting a letter of Pope Innocent, A.D.
419:

"Do you see what the Catholic faith holds by her minister?"
Again at Carthage he said, A.D. 417:

"Already two councils have been sent to the Apostolic See
concerning this matter, and rescripts have come from
thence. The case is concluded: would that the error would
soon cease also."

14. Pope Saint Anastasius, A.D. 401:

"I will certainly not be wanting....to call upon the parts of my
body throughout the various regions of the world."

15. Paulinus of Milan A.D. 417, writes to Pope Zosimus:

"Let that which...has been publicly brought to light be now
cut off by your Holiness with the spiri tual sword, that the
flock of the Lord [the whole Church] which you govern as a
good shepherd.... may no longer be torn by this wild beast's
teeth."

16. Pope Saint Innocent, A.D. 417:

"You decided that it was proper to refer to our judgement,
knowing what is due to the Apostolic See."

"You have preserved the customs of the Fathers, and have
not spurned that which they decreed by a divine and not
human sentence, that whatsoever is done, even though it be
done in distant provinces, should not be ended without
being brought to the knowledge of this See; that by its
authority the whole just pronouncement should be
strengthened; and that from it all other Churches (like
waters, flowing from their natal source and flowing through
the different regions of the world, the pure streams of one
uncorrupted head), should receive what they ought to
enjoin."

17. Pope Saint Zosimus, A.D. 417 writes:

"We must pray incessantly that, by the continual grace and
unceasing assistance of God, from this fountain [the
Apostolic See] the peace of the faith and of Catholic
brotherhood may be sent into the whole world."

18. Pope Saint Boniface, A.D. 419, writes:

"Never was it lawful to discuss again any matter which had
once been decided by the Apostolic See."

19. Pope Saint Celestine, A.D. 422:

"We, on whom Christ has, in the person of holy Peter the
Apostle, when He gave him the keys to open and shut,
imposed as a necessity to be engaged about all men

20. Council of Ephesus, A.D. 431, writes in sentence of
deposition against Nestorius:

"Whereas [etc.] .... we being necessarily com pelled by the
sacred canons and by the letter of our most holy Father and
colleague, Bishop Celestine, Bishop of the Roman Church,
with many tears, have arrived at this sad sentence against
him."

21. Pope Saint Sixtus III, A.D. 434:

"The blessed Peter, in his successors, has delivered that
which he received."

22. Saint Vincent of Lerins, A.D. 434, writes:

"Pope Stephen, of blessed memory, Prelate of the Apostolic
See, together with the rest of his colleagues indeed, yet
above the rest, resisted; thinking, I ween, that it was right
that he should conquer them all by the devotion of his faith

as much as he surpassed them by the authority of his
place."

23. Pope Saint Leo, A.D. 450:

"By the see of blessed Peter, made the head of the universe,
thou (0 Rome) mightest rule more widely by divine religion
than by earthly empire."

"The first of all the Sees...the Head...that See which the Lord
appointed to preside over the rest..."

"The care of the universal Church should converge to the
one See of Peter, and no part anywhere be at variance with
its Head."

24. Council of Chalcedon, A.D. 451, writes in the sentence of
deposition^ read by the papal legates and signed by all the
bishops, against Dioscorus:

"Wherefore the most holy and blessed archbishop of great
and elder Rome, Leo, by us and by the present holy synod,
together with the thrice blessed and glorious Peter the
Apostle, who is the rock and base of the Catholic Church and
the foundation of the orthodox faith, has stripped Dioscorus
of the episcopal...dignity."

And the Council writes to Pope Leo:

"The bishops...over whom you presided as a head over the
members..."

And of Dioscorus:

"He [Dioscorus] stretched forth his madness against him who
was entrusted by the Saviour with the guardianship of the
Vine we mean your Holiness ..." [and further with regard to

the twenty-eighth canon] "... We beg you honour the judge
ment with your approbation also; as we have added our
consent to the Head in all good things, so let the Head fulfill
what is befitting towards the children ..." [and further] "...
We have made known to you the whole tenor of the
business, for our own defence and for the confirmation and
approval of what has been done by us."

25. Anatolius, Patriarch of Constantinople, A.D. 451, writes
to Pope Leo with reference to the Council of Chalcedon:

"This decree the holy synod and we have referred to your
Holiness in order to obtain from you approval and
confirmation. . . For the throne of Constantinople has your
apostolic throne as its father."

About This EBook

The text of this ebook is taken from the book The Reli g ion of
the Plain Man by Father Robert Hugh Benson. Originally
published in 1906, the version used was the 4th printing,
1910. It has the Nihil Obstat of Arturus Stapleton Barnes,
Censor Deputatus and the Imprimi potest of Gulielmus
Episcopus Arindelensis,Vicar General, Archdiocese of
Westminster, England, 11 June 1906. The cover image is
Father Benson, and comes from the interior of the same
book.

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